|
SACRAMENTO — Calling San Quentin another "Bay Bridge boondoggle," lawmakers said Tuesday they are pushing a new, bipartisan bill at the 11th hour of the Legislature's 2005 session that would independently review expansion of the aging prison's death row and multimillion-dollar cost overruns.
A Bay Area Democrat who authored the bill ultimately wants to close the prison and sell the valuable land, while his Republican co-author represents part of the Central Valley — a region that largely embraces prison expansion and its jobs.
The trigger for introduction of legislation as lawmakers scramble toward their Friday adjournment was the disclosure by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration that the state is being forced to downsize San Quentin's $220 million death
row expansion due to $45 million in additional costs.
Despite a decision to
downsize by a fourth, lowering the price tag to $233 million, the project will still be 6 percent over budget, said Tom Campbell, Schwarzenegger's Finance Department chief. The cutback, forced by inflation in the construction industry, will result in the building of 768 cells to house 1,152 inmates.
"San Quentin is quickly becoming another Bay Bridge boondoggle," said Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael, who authored the bill to independently review the prison project.
Multibillion-dollar cost overruns in the Bay Bridge overhaul, to make it safer in earthquakes, stalled the project for months.
A spokesman for the state Corrections Department, J.P. Tremblay, said revision of the death row expansion was the right move to complete a needed facility and stay nearly within the original budget allocation. Tremblay said the administration
does not plan to ask lawmakers for additional money.
Nation said his bill would challenge the Corrections Department, through an independent analysis, to examine the costs to expand death row at San Quentin, as well as look at alternative locations for death row prisoners.
"To spend more money on an outdated, 150-year-old prison is ludicrous," said Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, who co-authored the bill.
"We cannot allow out-of-control spending to be wasted on this project when it is way over budget and will soon be beyond capacity," Denham said. "It's time for the governor and Legislature to look for other alternatives to this mess."
The bipartisan bill is pending in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Though its authors believe prospects for legislative approval are good, it faces an uncertain future before the governor.
Last year, the bill's
authors said, the state auditor released a report that chastised the Corrections Department for failing to conduct a thorough study of the costs associated with the planned expansion of death row.
Specifically, the report pointed to the limited analysis and comparison of other suitable locations besides San Quentin, lawmakers said. They believe the failure to examine other potential sites has called into question whether San Quentin is the most financially viable location for a new death row complex.
But Tremblay said the state has studied alternative sites. It comes down "to where can we get a death row placed, politically speaking," he said. "You have to look at it logistically — it has to be near an urban area, where there's access to the courts and to attorneys."
The new bill comes as Marin County officials are challenging the project's environmental impact report as inadequate.
Local officials are concerned about traffic, views, the shoreline, lighting, noise, water, sewage and electrical use.
Separate legislation by both lawmakers, which would have pushed the state toward another location and sale of San Quentin, has been opposed by the Corrections Department.
In July, San Quentin was affected when a federal judge placed the department's health care system into receivership.
San Quentin was cited for its treatment of prisoners, the lack of minimal health care for inmates and an aging and crumbling infrastructure that poses a serious public safety concern and a dangerous environment for guards and other prison employees.
Offering further proof of problems at the aging prison was a recent outbreak of violence, lawmakers said.
Forty-two inmates were injured when a simmering dispute between two
ethnic groups erupted into the largest riot at San Quentin in 23 years. About 80 inmates in four different buildings were involved in the tumult, which lasted six minutes.
It took about 50 officers armed with batons and pepper spray to quell the fight.
Contact Sacramento Bureau Chief Steve Geissinger at sgeissinger@angnewspapers.com.
|
RETURN TO TOP
