MORE MILLIONS FOR STATE PRISONS

So this is the way public policymaking works in "conservative" Tallahassee.
Lawmakers spend literally months dithering over the fine details of a
medical malpractice "reform" package that, in the end, may neither lower
malpractice insurance rates nor protect victims of bad medicine.

And then in the space of just a day or two, the governor requests, and the
Legislature quickly authorizes, an additional $66 million for the state
prison system.

Just like that.

Oh yes, and as a sweetener, lawmakers rewarded the Department of
Corrections' poor planning by giving officials permission to skip the
state's pesky bidding requirements for construction projects.

These 2,000 or so new prison beds need to be built quickly -there's simply
no time to follow proper procedures and make sure the taxpayers' dollars
are being well spent.

But not to worry, administration officials crossed their hearts and
absolutely promised that there would be no sweetheart deals made as Florida
embarks on yet another expensive building boom to keep up with its growing
prison population.

"It's really setting a bad precedent," complains state Sen. Rod Smith,
D-Gainesville. "It's dangerous to let a state agency say 'we screwed up and
now we have a crisis' and now they get to circumvent state policy for
bidding. These numbers didn't just pop up yesterday."

On the plus side, at least the Legislature had the good judgment to refuse
Gov. Jeb Bush's emergency request to spend additional money to begin
construction of a private prison.

Given the spotty track record of privatization in the corrections
"industry," that's not a decision lawmakers want to make on the fly and
with few questions asked.

So why the crisis atmosphere?

Seemingly, Corrections Secretary James Crosby woke up one recent morning
with an astounding revelation: Oh my gosh. We've got a crowding crisis on
our hands. We need a whole bunch of new money pronto. And if we have to put
out bids, we may be forced to turn dangerous criminals loose on society.

Never mind that Gov. Bush and the Legislature have been instituting tough
new sentencing laws for years -- thereby guaranteeing overflowing prisons.
Forget that admissions into the prisons have outstripped expectations for
seven of the past 10 months.

Why, it wasn't until a dramatic "spike" in admissions in June that it
occurred to Team Bush that they may have a little "no vacancy" problem
staring them in the face at the Lockup Hotel.

On the other hand, in politics as in comedy, timing is everything. And it
would have been very bad timing indeed if the DOC had "discovered" its
crowding crisis last year -- an election year when lawmakers were busy
cutting taxes as party favors.

Or even during this year's regular legislative session, for that matter. A
couple of months ago, Bush and the Legislature were too busy cutting the
guts out of higher-education budgets; putting the crunch on social
services, childwelfare and juvenile-rehabilitation programs; eliminating
corrections positions; raiding state trust fund budgets; and finding other
creative ways to pay for their yearslong orgy of tax cutting.

The governor and the Legislature may be able to cram thousands of
additional students into the state universities and community colleges,
year after year, with no additional funding. But when it comes to
warehousing prisoners, it's pretty much a cash-and-carry proposition.

The bad news is that when it comes to expensive prisons, Floridians ain't
seen nothing yet.

In the coming years, the state will certainly have to continue to play
catchup, building more and more cells for more and more inmates -- many of
them substanceaddicted felons who were sentenced under the state's
tough-asnails drug laws and who got no treatment because of cutbacks in
prevention programs.

But the real heavy bills probably won't begin to arrive for another decade
or so.

That's when thousands of inmates incarcerated under Florida's life-
without-parole laws will begin to enter into their golden years -past the
age when they are likely to commit further crimes, but ineligible for
release nonetheless.

Inevitably, the Department of Corrections will find itself operating the
largest chain of retirement homes in Florida, and the cost of housing and
caring for an aging inmate population will explode exponentially.

Call it condos for cons.