California Prison Health Czar Heads to Court
SAN FRANCISCO — The court-appointed receiver for California prison healthcare asked a federal judge in San Francisco to seize $8 billion from the state’s treasury to build seven regional medical facilities.
Receiver J. Clark Kelso filed the motion with U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson after state lawmakers twice rejected a legislative proposal authorizing a $7 billion bond issue to fund the prison healthcare overhaul.
Seeking a total of $8 billion during the next five years, Kelso asked the court for an initial transfer of more than $3.1 billion in the current fiscal year, according to court documents.
The motion also asked the court to impose fines of $2 million per day should the state funds not be made available to the receivership.
The state and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation are under federal court order to raise the level of healthcare to constitutional standards, which provides Kelso with the opportunity to circumvent standard legislative procedures to procure funds to improve infrastructure and service delivery.
Proposed Medical Center Sites Northern California: Deuel Vocation Institution, in Tracy; California State Prison, in Sacramento; California State Prison, Solano; and Northern California Youth Correctional Center, in Stockton. Southern California: R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility, near San Diego; Ventura Youth Correctional Facility, in Camarillo; California Institution for Men, in Chino; and Fred C. Nelles Juvenile Correctional Facility, in Whittier. |
The funding request includes $6 billion for seven new regional medical facilities and up to 10,000 new medical beds for state inmates, and $900 million for the renovation of existing medical facilities throughout the state.
Although dental care is not under the authority of the California Prison Health Care Receivership, the request seeks $1.1 billion more than the earlier $7 billion bond-issue proposal, rejected by lawmakers, to fund improvements to prison dental facilities.
Merging the proposed upgrade of dental facilities with the receivership’s planned overhaul of medical facilities would create a comprehensive prison healthcare reform strategy that would be more efficient and cost-effective in the long term, officials say.
Employing a coopetition model for integrated project delivery and design-build services, the receivership selected the final design-build teams for the $2.5 billion first phase of the proposed prison healthcare improvement plan in July.
As reported in the July/August issue of Correctional News, the phase I design-build teams are Clark/McCarthy/HDR/HGA,DPR/Boldt/Kiewit/Stantec/GKK/Rosser, and Hensel Phelps/HOK/HKS.
Although plans are not yet finalized for all seven proposed medical facilities, the fast-tracked process has reached the environmental impact report phase for sites in Stockton and San Diego, officials say.
The receivership’s construction advisory board, which was established to oversee implementation of the program, plans to break ground on the first facility in early 2009, officials say.
