Schwarzenegger Seeks to Scrap Receivership’s $8 Billion Prison Construction Program

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State officials asked a judge to end the court-appointed receivership of California prison healthcare and terminate the $8 billion spending plan to return the system to constitutional standards, in a motion filed in federal district court.

The plan would deliver a level of healthcare in the prison system far beyond the constitutional standards required by federal law and federal courts do not have the authority to order prison construction without the consent of the state, California officials say.

“With an $8 billion price tag for a construction plan that includes yoga rooms and landscaped courtyards, it’s clear that the receiver has lost site of his lawful charge to bring prison healthcare up to a constitutionally adequate level of care,” says Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “It’s time to return responsibility to the state, where it belongs, and where there is accountability to the people of California.”

Receiver J. Clark Kelso’s proposed overhaul includes construction of seven new 1,500-bed acute and long-term care medical facilities. The plan would also improve existing dental, medical and mental health care facilities throughout the 33-facility state prison system.

Exclusive of the proposed capital outlay for facility construction, annual per-inmate operating cost for the seven new facilities is $230,000, according to state estimates.

California officials argue the receivership’s plan is excessive, particularly in the current economic realities — the state is struggling to manage an unprecedented budget deficit of about $42 billion.

“The growth in the receiver’s spending and his plans to spend billions more would be alarming even in normal times,” says state Department of Finance director Michael Genest.

California spends about $13,000 per inmate on healthcare, approximately $8,000 more than per inmate healthcare spending in the federal prison system, $9,000 more than Florida and $7,000 more than New York, according to state figures.

“Now that the full reality of this $8 billion boondoggle — this gold-plated Utopian hospital plan that would turn inmates into patients has sunk home — we believe we need a fundamental change, a return to the Department of Corrections, and the provision of healthcare on a more reasonable and humane basis,” says state Attorney General Jerry Brown.

U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson established the receivership in 2005 to overhaul prison medical care and facilities, pursuant to a settlement agreement in the 1991 Plata v. Schwarzenegger class-action lawsuit that found inmates were dying at the rate of one per week.

The attorney general’s accusations are nothing more than political grandstanding to further his 2010 gubernatorial ambitions, says J. Clark Kelso. Brown should stop wasting taxpayers’ money with baseless motions.

“Disbanding the receivership and its operations prematurely would only turn back the clock on the improvements designed to end California’s violation of the cruel and unusual punishment prohibition of the U.S. Constitution,” Kelso says. “It would also be more costly to taxpayers to stop the planning and projects that are underway, only to restart them later.”

The termination motion filed with Judge Henderson seeks to replace the receiver with a special master to oversee transition of the healthcare system back to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The special master would be appointed by the federal court to act in an advisory and oversight capacity without Kelso’s far-reaching powers, according to the motion.

“The courts should terminate this unaccountable prison receivership and its $8 billion construction plan, restoring a dose of fiscal reality to the provision of inmate medical care in California,” Brown says. “The federal receivership has turned into its own autonomous government, operating outside the normal checks and balances of federal law.”