The Legislature's budget committee swallowed hard Tuesday afternoon and voted to give the prisons director money to expand community corrections beds in Lincoln.Â
The decision came as the nine-member Appropriations Committee reviewed requests from agencies and senators, and buttoned up some final decisions on the budget it will send to the full Legislature next week.Â
Decision making got tense at times, when committee members disagreed on funding choices. Fairly early in the discussions, Sen. Bill Kintner got exasperated with spending decisions and shouted at Chairman Heath Mello, who invited him to leave the meeting. He left, saying he wasn't going to vote to spend any more money, anyway, and didn't return.Â
Department of Correctional Services Director Scott Frakes had asked the Appropriations Committee for $26.2 million to construct 160 community custody beds for women.
People are also reading…
For months, since Frakes delivered his strategic plan for the prisons, which included the expansion project, several legislative committees have questioned whether it is the best use of resources to help alleviate the giant problem hanging over the department: prison crowding.
Mello was reluctant to fund the project, but had finally decided the Legislature needed to OK it, even if those beds wouldn't be ready for at least three years.
He was expecting more of an effort from the department, he said, to deal with prison crowding in the short term. But the reality is, that's the request the Legislature received.Â
Sen. Dan Watermeier, a member of the committee, said he believed community corrections beds were a safe bet, the most practical choice, because those would be the beds the state would need the most and the longest.Â
Lincoln Sen. Kate Bolz said Frakes' proposal didn't satisfy what she saw as the need to address crowding, but she would go along with it.Â
Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm agreed the decision didn't feel right. And Omaha Sen. Tanya Cook said even though the expansion could eventually lead to more access to programming for inmates, she's concerned in two years she'll still be reading about brick-and-mortar expansions and inadequate services.Â
In defending the proposal, Frakes has told senators he believes recent laws aimed at reducing the prison population and a reclassification of inmates will work in time, and this will be the project most needed.Â
The committee also voted to advance a bill (LB733), introduced by Watermeier, that would appropriate $1.5 million for retention bonuses for Corrections staff.Â
The department has been able to recruit more staff in recent months, but loses a high number at the same time. Mello said the committee can't force the department to use the money for bonuses, but it has to try, and hope that the base salary for those employees can be raised during the next contract negotiations.Â
In other decisions, the committee voted to make room for $13.7 million, from the state's rainy day fund, to improve levees that protect Offutt Air Force Base from potential flooding.
An amendment to a bill (LB537) would create the Military Installation Infrastructure Program, to be administered by the state Department of Natural Resources. The program would provide grants to assist in those infrastructure improvements.Â
The levee improvements would cost $25 million, and the cities of Bellevue and Omaha and the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District would make up the remainder of funding.
Offutt provides about $1.5 billion annual economic impact to the Omaha metro area and the state economy, Mello said earlier at a hearing on the amendment. It employs more than 10,000 people.
Without the levee project, he said, a $125 million runway project, needed to help ensure Offutt isn't closed or realigned in the future, could be jeopardized.