 
|
|||||||||
              
|
Private prison in Clearfield County still has a big hurdle to jump
Sunday, January 30, 2000 By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
PHILIPSBURG, Pa. - Advice for people hoping to get one of the 346 jobs that a private prison operator promises to shower on the lean economy of eastern Clearfield County: Don't thumb your nose at your old boss just yet.
Before he'll lift his 7-month-old roadblock to the project, state Attorney General Mike Fisher has to be convinced that there's some way the planned prison can even operate legally in the commonwealth. It would be the only private prison in Pennsylvania, and it would house inmates for the federal Bureau of Prisons.
So far, though, Fisher and other key state officials are not convinced. They say nothing in state law permits private prisons. And two local state senators say that, barring a breakthrough at a yet-unscheduled meeting with Fisher's representatives, it will take legislation to rescue the project.
Without Fisher's blessing, said Sen. John Wozniak, D-Johnstown, "this is probably going to be dead." And legislatively, "There probably isn't enough support, particularly in an election year, to save private prisons."
If the Texas-based company that plans to run the prison cringes at such talk, it doesn't cringe publicly.
Tom Jenkins, chief operating officer of Cornell Corrections Inc., the firm that would run the 1,000-inmate complex, said last week that his company was not backing away and that he hoped to begin construction during the first half of this year.
"If a private entity is given authority to operate a federal prison, what's the next step?" state Department of Corrections spokesman Mike Lukens asked. "Does it stop with this? Does it go on to other prisons?"
"This is a new industry in our country," Jenkins said, "and everywhere there's a new industry, there will be challenges."
But Cornell's challenges don't end at the attorney general's office and the Legislature.
The company has wide local support, mostly because it came bearing a gift basket of promised taxes and jobs, such as guard positions with $14.53-an-hour starting pay. But a federal lawsuit, filed by the local Citizens Advisory Committee on Private Prisons, charges that the federal Bureau of Prisons' environmental studies, covering items ranging from sewage treatment to emergency services, did not probe deeply enough. The suit is awaiting action at the federal court in Johnstown.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave credence to that lawsuit last month, telling the Bureau of Prisons that reports on expected environmental impacts needed more detail. At the least, that means more paperwork. But if the EPA isn't happy with the bureau's study or its results, it could request an expanded study and even press the case to the president's Council of Environmental Quality, which holds the power of life and death over the project.
Tom Ridge has not weighed in heavily on the project. But spokesman Kevin Shivers said last week that the governor was opposed because nothing in state law allows privately run prisons.
"If the governor is opposed, it's exceedingly tough to get the project done," said state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Bellefonte, a freshman senator who supports the project for the economic benefits that would wash into his neighboring district.
Cornell, the third-largest private prison operator in the nation, has 13,000 inmates among 56 facilities in 14 states, its fortunes fed by rising prison populations and advocates who say private enterprise can build and operate prisons more cheaply than government can.
Its Clearfield County complex, built on reclaimed strip mines just west of Philipsburg, would house 350 minimum-security male prisoners and 300 women of various security grades. The other 350 would be minimum- and medium-security teen-age boys, all federal responsibility under a 1997 law that gave the federal government the job of housing the District of Columbia's felons.
For Cornell's supporters in eastern Clearfield County, that means a bonanza. Philipsburg-Osceola School District, for instance, figured the prison would drive up its real estate tax revenue $600,000, or 14 percent.
But the idea didn't play as well in Harrisburg. Cornell contends that no state law bars private prisons. But Fisher told Cornell five months ago that no law allows it, either. He said that without that law, "operation of a private prison in Pennsylvania is unlawful."
Fisher spokesman Sean Connolly said talks between Fisher's office and Cornell had been constructive. Cornell's Jenkins said the two sides made progress, with Cornell promising the prison would be operated "according to the highest standards."
Corman and Wozniak said that, to answer Fisher's legal concerns, negotiators had pondered such options as declaring the prison site a federal enclave, a move that would remove it from state oversight.
But supporters in Clearfield County worry that that could also make the property tax exempt.
To state officials, the stakes are constitutional: Can a private company hold people in prison? Can it legally mete out force on people?
To eastern Clearfield County, where the unemployment rate is 7.5 percent, it comes down to dollars.
"If Cornell locates somewhere else in a 300-mile radius, say Ohio, then that pay is going there," Wozniak said. "The things people will buy with that pay, at grocery stores and anywhere else, it all goes there."
|
||||||||
