CORRECTIONS IN CRUNCH FOR CASH, SEEKS IDEAS

HELENA -- The state Department of Corrections needs an extra $11.5
million to make it until July and has temporarily scrapped plans to
build a special needs prison for lack of funds, officials announced Thursday.

Corrections Director Bill Slaughter asked the interim Legislative
Finance Committee Thursday for permission to spend the money out of
the agency's pool of funds set aside for next year. He also asked the
lawmakers whether they had any ideas on how the department might cut
down on costs -- a delicate task in an agency that cannot scrimp on
staff at lock-down institutions.

Spending money set aside for next year will leave an even bigger hole
down the line, David Ewer, the governor's budget director, said after
the meeting. But Ewer said until the state finds a better way of
addressing crime and methamphetamine, bigger budgets for Corrections
are unavoidable.

"If we thought there was a viable way of saving this money without
jeopardizing public safety, we wouldn't be here," Ewer said. Records
show about half of the budget overrun comes from hundreds more people
in Montana's penal system than agency officials and lawmakers
expected when they set the department's budget in the 2005 Legislature.

Slaughter said the overrun isn't all bad. If there wasn't stress on
the system, he said, no one would ever think of new ways of looking
at corrections and the state would continue building prisons and
filling them up.

"The pressure forces us to be innovative," he said after the meeting.

Slaughter praised Gov. Brian Schweitzer for encouraging the
department to think differently about crime and punishment -- a
sentiment the 2005 Legislature embraced.

Under lawmakers' direction, the agency is weeks away from announcing
a contract to open the state's first lock-down meth treatment center,
which would offer chemical dependency treatment as well as punishment
to drug felons hooked on meth.

The agency had also hoped to open a 256-cell prison for disabled,
mentally ill or otherwise impaired inmates. That plan has been
postponed because of a lack of money.

Ewer said the state is going to have to rethink crime and punishment
or face the prospect of paying ever more for traditional lock-down
penal systems.

"Long-term, the answer isn't just building more prison beds," he
said. And sometimes, he said, you have to spend money to save money.
For example, a few years ago lawmakers decided to cut drug addiction
counseling in prison to save money. But with so many addicts ending
up in prison, such a move may have resulted in even bigger bills
today. The agency has since brought back the counseling.

Lawmakers, too, are interested in doing different things with
Corrections. Sen. John Cobb, a Republican from Augusta and chairman
of the committee, asked Slaughter and his staff to come up with a
variety of things the state could do to handle crime and punishment
better. Cobb told the committee that the ideas were simply that --
ideas -- and he encouraged people not to attack Slaughter for
bringing them forward.

Among the possibilities: provide unemployment benefits to ex-cons for
the first three months they get out of prison so they can establish
themselves or teach anger-management classes in schools.

"I applaud you," said Sen. Rick Laible, R-Victor. "You're doing
something that is innovative."

The committee didn't make any decisions about the extra money.