FIGHT BREWS OVER STATE'S INMATE WORK PROGRAM

* The Future Of Measure 17's Mandate Will Be At The Center Of Debate During
The Upcoming Legislative Session

Ballot Measure 17 passed on promises of inmates toiling behind bars --
working a 40-hour week to help pay for their prison stay and make
restitution to the victims and communities they had harmed.

But more than four years after voters changed the Oregon Constitution to
force inmates to work, the vision of prison labor has yet to be realized.

To date, slightly fewer than 60 percent of eligible inmates are fulfilling
the voters' mandate. And by Oregon Department of Corrections estimates, it
will take at least eight more years to employ all the state's eligible
prisoners.

But even those projections will suffer a serious blow if Gov. John
Kitzhaber's budget proposal gains support. The governor wants to slash the
1999-2001 inmate work program budget from $14.4 million to $9 million,
saying it has become too expensive and competes too heavily with the
private sector, forcing law-abiding Oregonians out of jobs.

Kitzhaber's plan has infuriated some Republicans in the Legislature who
view it as an attempt to thwart a program he never has liked but that
Oregon voters approved by a landslide.

The Corrections Department, meanwhile, is at the center of a political
storm, caught between contrary philosophies on how inmate work should be
implemented: make it self-supportive and risk stealing private sector jobs,
or finance it, even at the expense of other government programs.

"We need to ask ourselves, 'What is the price for full compliance, and are
we willing to pay it?' " Kitzhaber said.

Oregon is unique in its struggle because it is the only state that mandates
all eligible inmates work a 40-hour week. Other states have experienced
fewer problems because they "are not under the same kind of pressure to
have 100 percent inmate employment," said Gwyn Smith-Ingley, executive
director of the Correctional Industries Association at the University of
Baltimore. "At 60 percent in Oregon, to me, sounds like an incredible
achievement."

Creating inmate work in Oregon so far has required a combination of
generous general fund support -- $34 million by the end of the budget
biennium -- and the aggressive pursuit of private partnerships and contracts.

In proposing to cut the budget for inmate work, Kitzhaber will force the
Legislature to debate how it should be implemented and at what expense. The
governor said that would have been done four years ago if not for the
initiative process that bypasses the Legislature.

State Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, who sponsored the measure in 1994 as a
state senator, is poised to fight the governor's proposed budget and push
hard for even more financing.

"I think the governor is rejecting the will of the people and
misinterpreting financial information," Mannix said.

Because inmate labor is so cheap, "every dollar we invest, we're getting
back two or three dollars in benefit to the taxpayers," he said, and those
and other advantages -- like prisoner rehabilitation -- don't show up in a
budget document.

"I've had to tell these idiots over and over again that the measure had to
do with community benefit," said Mannix, who will play an influential role
in the debate as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which handles
prison issues. "If inmates help a community at a cost lower than outside
workers could have provided it for, then taxpayers have come out ahead,
even if the state has to underwrite some of the cost."

Legislators in both parties agree inmate work will become a center of
debate in the session. But where that will lead is uncertain.

"This is not something I expect to break down party lines," said State Rep.
Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, who supports the idea of inmate work but worries
about its cost to the general fund. "I think everyone will look at the
issue, listen and decide where we should go next. Where that is, I don't
know."

Kitzhaber, meanwhile, said he is not trying to stall inmate work and denies
that his efforts are a back-door attempt to inspire a repeal.

"Voters can say 'make gold out of lead,' " Kitzhaber said. "But figuring
out how to do this has been monumental. We've bumped into security risks,
taken jobs away from law-abiding citizens and competed with the private
sector. That's happening at the same time as we're paying millions to get
the program up and running. I don't think voters intended these things to
happen."

Some Inmates Too Dangerous

Oregon's total prison population is about 8,500, but roughly a fourth of
those inmates are unable to work because they are too dangerous or are
mentally ill. Corrections officials have faced serious challenges finding
jobs for the 6,688 prisoners who are eligible.

Transporting them to jobs and monitoring them are costly. Prisons don't
have enough industrial space to employ more inmates on-site. And Measure 17
mandates that inmate work go beyond busy work.

"You can't have inmates cleaning the same toilets three times because the
constitution says the work has got to be 'meaningful,' " said Nancy
DeSouza, communications manager for Inmate Work Programs, an arm of the
Corrections Department. "That's why we're trying to help transition inmate
work into the private sector so we can save the state money."

Measure 17 requires that the "value" of inmate labor either reduce the cost
of government or make a profit for the private sector. Although most states
ban prisons from getting involved in private enterprise, the Oregon
Constitution mandates it.

State government provides about three-fourths of the inmate work done in
Oregon. It ranges from traditional tasks -- mopping floors, cooking food
and scrubbing toilets -- to answering phones for state Driver and Motor
Vehicle Services.

Inmates build office cubicles that are sold to other government agencies
and design bedroom sets for private furniture stores in the Oregon State
Penitentiary wood factory. They rebuild car engines and wash several tons
of laundry a year. They package meat and process fresh milk for many state
institutions.

But with the inmate population expected to swell to more than 14,000 in the
next decade, there aren't enough jobs to employ all of them through state
government alone.

So the inmate work program has turned to private industry to make up the
difference, putting it under increasing criticism.

"Most taxpayers didn't think about the cost to the state," DeSouza said.
"They thought we would be able to immediately fire up all these businesses
and sell products that wouldn't compete with business or hurt anybody."

A Eugene company that manufactured furniture and permanent tents for state
parks cried foul when the contract was later awarded to prison workers. And
a construction labor union strongly objected when inmate work was used to
help build the Umatilla prison.

In the most significant example of the competition spurred by inmate work,
two dozen employees were laid off in October when Sacred Heart Hospital in
Eugene opted not to renew its contract with a local private laundry and
sent its linens to the Oregon State Penitentiary for prisoners to clean and
fold.

"The fact that we lost the contract in and of itself is not the issue for
me," said Bill Inge, general manager for the Eugene branch of American
Linen. "The issue is, and always has been, that here you have a publicly
supported enterprise that's competing with the private sector. In this
case, it's convicted convicts taking away the jobs of law-abiding,
dedicated people on the outside."

Ruth Lawsh, 45, of Creswell was among those laid off.

Lawsh was hired by American Linen in June. She said it was the first time
in years that she and her husband, Charles, 50, a disabled Vietnam veteran,
had been able to get off food stamps.

The job paid minimum wage, but the overtime alone was almost enough to pay
the $384 monthly rent on the couple's apartment. Lawsh even splurged last
summer and took the struggling couple's wedding bands out of pawn.

"I'm not angry at the prison," said Lawsh, who still has not found
full-time work. "I understand the need for prison work. What upsets me is
that prisoners don't have to worry about food, bills and clothing."

Lawsh was forced to pawn the wedding bands once again to pay the October
rent and is back to collecting welfare benefits.

"As a taxpayer, I'm paying for their living situation, and then I lose my
job to them," she said. "It hurts."

Kitzhaber says it's people like Lawsh who need to be protected. "Although
we've been pursuing private partnerships to make this program work, we're
starting to bump into instances where people are losing jobs they need,"
said Kitzhaber, who sits on the Prison Industries Board, which approves
inmate work contracts. "We need to be careful so this does not get out of
control."

Besides the Sacred Heart layoffs, no specific numbers are available on how
many people have been laid off because private jobs went to prisoners.

Mannix, however, vehemently denies inmate work will have a significant
impact on private-sector jobs.

"I can count them on my fingers and toes," Mannix said, referring to the
number of Oregonians who have lost their jobs because of inmate work. "I
can't come up with a single good reason for not having inmates work, except
for the self-serving reasons of those who worry about the fact that they
may not get as much business as they used to get."

When prison labor encroaches on private sector jobs, "we're the ones who
are vilified," DeSouza said.

"Some have made it sound like Sacred Heart Hospital made this heartless
decision to switch from a local laundry to a prison," she said, adding that
Sacred Heart had planned to drop its American Linen contract long before
the hospital decided to use inmate labor.

DeSouza said it was unfortunate that workers were laid off but said the
Corrections Department should not be criticized for doing what voters
ordered it to do.

"While there may be individual problems with local groups or labor
organizations, we're going to work very hard to diminish those and go
around them," she said.

"If Oregon's economy takes a downturn, I foresee -- and so do a lot of
other people -- more problems of competition with the private sector."

TheCorrections Department has developed private partnerships with four
companies, including a firm that has taken over production and marketing of
the popular Prison Blues line of clothing sewn at the Eastern Oregon
Correctional Institution in Pendleton.

Inmates also produce wooden pallets for a Salem company, and assemble cell
doors and security windows for a Minnesota firm. Another company is waiting
for the necessary permits to build a facility on prison property where
inmates can produce concrete building panels.

DeSouza and other Corrections officials said they would continue to do what
the constitution mandates.

"Competition with the private sector is the reality of what we've been
charged to do," she said. "That's a reality that every legislator knows,
the governor knows and the public knows. These issues are going to come up.

"If the people of Oregon decide to repeal Measure 17, or alter it, we'll do
that."

Mannix Vows Fight

Although the governor's budget seeks to scale back inmate work, Mannix has
vowed to fight for full legislative support of his initiative.

"I'm going to ask counties and cities to come forward with projects they
would like to accomplish that are labor intensive, and then designate that
certain state funds have to be used to put inmates in the field to
accomplish those projects," he said.

If the primary goal is to make inmate work self-funded, the program never
will benefit voters in the way the measure intended, he said.

Until recently, the Corrections Department charged cities and other
government agencies about $175 per inmate work crew.

A crew generally consists of 10 inmates and a supervisor who travel outside
prison walls to pick up trash, repair fences and conduct other
labor-intensive projects. To hire the same number of private-sector
laborers would cost as much as $900 a day, Mannix said.

Now, with the pressure to make inmate work as self-funded as possible, the
department has begun charging about $400 a day to cover the full cost of
providing the work crew, a move that has turned some state and local
agencies away.

Some work crews are fully subsidized, or provided at a lower cost if the
agency provides supervision.

Raising the price is an example of how making inmate work self-supporting
flies in the face of what the measure intended, Mannix argues.

"Let's say we send out an inmate work crew for free," he said. "Say it cost
Corrections $450. The taxpayers just came out ahead $450 because they got
$900 worth of good in a community for local government for a cost of $450
to state government. That's a 2-for-1 gain."

Mannix said he applies the same logic to legislators who think general fund
support money for Measure 17 is a cost burden.

"We appropriated a lot of money to implement Measure 17, and some
legislators were thinking, 'Gee, it just cost us $22.5 million to implement
this.' I said, 'Time out. What benefit did we get back from that? Because
if we got back more than $22.5 million worth of inmate work, then we saved
the taxpayers some money because we've just done some things we wanted to
do and we did it for less.' "

Kitzhaber's budget proposal would eliminate the positions of 40 work crew
supervisors, meaning that far fewer crews would be available to cities and
state agencies at less than the full $400 daily cost.

Mannix said he will try to change the mindset surrounding the measure he
wrote.

"Unfortunately, because we have city government, county government, state
government, they look at their own budget dollar as one little box," Mannix
said. "They're only focusing on their own little piece of it, not the
totality of the effort. And that's the vision part that still needs to be
dealt with."

Mannix said he also will suggest new ways to get more prisoners into
outside work crews to help enforce the measure.

"We should let out a number of medium-security inmates who are escape
risks, but we're also going to enhance the security level and the power of
corrections officers on hand to take adverse action to prevent an escape,"
Mannix said. "Now, I'm not supporting the idea of chain gangs, necessarily,
with shotgun-toting corrections officers, but yes, we need to empower them
to shoot if necessary.

"That will get more prisoners working."

The Corrections Department has requested $20.3 million in general fund
support for the upcoming budget biennium, more than twice what the governor
proposed. And if funding is reduced, even Kitzhaber admits it will reduce
compliance.

His shift from heavy financing for inmate work programs coincides with a
strong support for prevention programs such as education and reducing
juvenile crime.

Mannix refutes Kitzhaber's contention that paying for inmate work siphons
general fund support from other government programs.

"The only reason it would cut into other programs is if it would be run
stupidly," Mannix said.

Although acknowledging that the inmate work cut was "controversial,"
Kitzhaber said he would rather provide some general fund support for inmate
work than encourage heavy competition for private-sector jobs.

"I don't think general fund support is a bad thing," Kitzhaber said. "But
it's enormously complicated, and it ought to be a statute. Kevin (Mannix)
had little regard for the impact of these costs. Funding some general fund
investment is not bad, but the question is, at what point do you start to
underfund programs that keep people out of trouble in the first place."

Checked-by: Richard Lake