Tag Archives: Transparency

News about CCA’s private prison Project Excel expected at Thursday’s VLCIA board meeting

Thursday’s Industrial Authority retreat and board meeting are both open meetings, which the public can attend. And at the 2PM board meeting apparently there will be news about Project Excel, CCA’s private prison.

VLCIA Executive Director Andrea Schruijer clarified on the telephone just now that Thursday’s 9AM-2PM board retreat is an open meeting; the public can attend. She said the agenda was made by the facilitator, and she had not seen it. The purpose of the retreat is for board members to talk about their experiences and roles as board members. The retreat is not for discussing specific projects.

Regarding the 2PM board meeting Thursday, she said she thought the agenda was on VLCIA’s web pages. When we looked and found it wasn’t there, she said apparently there was some confusion due to the rescheduling of the meeting, and the agenda would be there soon.

I asked her whether the Project Excel Project Excel, the CCA private prison, she said the Preliminary Specifications ( see section 1.6.1) had been received. She said they had been received, and they were simply a site diagram, a copy of which was hanging on VLCIA’s office wall. From discussion with her, it appears to be this site plan: Continue reading →

Two VLCIA meetings Thursday: retreat and board 2012 02 23

This month’s cancelled Industrial Authority board meeting has been rescheduled. Not the usual date, not the usual time, not the usual place:
Notice: The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Regular Meeting has been rescheduled for the month of February. The meeting date will be Thursday, February 23, 2011, 2:00 P.M. at 101 N Ashley Street.

Notice of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Board Retreat, Thursday, February 23, 2012, 9:00 AM- 2:00 PM at 101 N Ashley Street.
Since I’m familiar with that location as the old closed pawn shop, I called VLCIA’s new PR person, Meghan Duke, for clarification. I congratulated her on her recent appointment, and repeated what I’ve been saying for some time now, that VLCIA does many good things most people don’t know about and with some PR maybe we would. She said she was working on educating the public.

About the meeting location, she told me Continue reading →

Alcohol ordinance and license plus two road abandonments @ LCC 2012 02 13-14

What does a Community Corrections Director do? What is the proposed modification to the alcohol ordinance? We don’t know, because the county doesn’t post the details of agenda items, just cryptic shorthand that may mean something to Commissioners or staff, but that means nothing to the public.

At this morning’s work session and tomorrow evening’s regular session, the Lowndes County Commission has a brief but eventful agenda, including a modification to the alcohol ordinance, an alcohol license, a DHS grant a GDOT grant for a road project on Davidson Road (presumably related to the new Moody AFB gate), two road abandonments, and this interesting item:

6.h. Request from Superior Court to establish salary of the Community Corrections Director
Your guess is as good as mine.

Here’s the agenda.

-jsq

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Who are the “local leadership” who approved CCA’s private prison?

They’re even quieter about it than the Industrial Authority, but the Valdosta City and Lowndes County governments are in the private prison deal just as deep.

Jay Hollis, CCA’s Manager of Site Acquisition, in his Valdosta-Lowndes County, GA / CCA Partnership: Prepared Remarks of August 2010, wrote:

Our Valdosta/Lowndes County site quickly became our primary due to its local and regional workforce, collaboration of local leadership, site characteristics, proximity to necessary services and infrastructure, and accessibility to name a few.
So who is this local leadership?
We look forward to working closely with Valdosta/Lowndes leadership as we move forward in the months to come.

Finally, I’d like to take a moment to recognize a few folks that have been essential to the project:

Continue reading →

Why did CCA pick Lowndes County for a private prison?

Apparently CCA picked Lowndes County for a private prison for reasons that were not what VLCIA’s consultant seemed to think would influence the selection.

According to Valdosta-Lowndes County, GA / CCA Partnership: Talking Points (undated, but it refers to “The agreement formalized by the Industrial Authority on 8/17”),

The Valdosta/Lowndes site became the primary due to the local and regional workforce, collaboration of local leadership, site characteristics, proximity to necessary services and infrastructure, accessibility, etc.
Nothing in there about low poverty or high wages. One could even read that the other way around, as in a low-wage population looking for jobs.

Looks to me like our Industrial Authority didn’t do much due diligence about private prisons.

Also note that the contract of 17 August 2010 between VLCIA and CCA was signed after the announcement in July 2010 that CCA had selected Decatur County. More about that in another post.

-jsq

Apparently VLCIA misunderstood what CCA was looking for

Apparently VLCIA, or one of its expert consultants, thought CCA was looking for a thriving county economy in choosing a private prison location. That doesn’t seem to be what happened.

Economic Impact of Project Excel by Clifford A. Lipscomb, Ph.D., 2 November 2009:

The VLCIA has noted that Project Excel is considering other locations. Below I provide a comparison of key economic indicators for these alternative counties — Grady and Decatur.
Table 1. Characteristics of Selected Counties
VariableDecaturGradyLowndes
Population, 2008 28,82325,115104,583
% Pop w/ Bachelor’s degree 12.1%10.6%19.7%
Median HH Income, 2007 32,65033,06038,666
Persons below poverty, 2007 22.5%22.2%20.5%
Persons white non-Hispanic, 2008 54.8%60.6%60.0%
In closing, it appears that Project Excel is an excellent candidate for location in Lowndes County.
So which other county did CCA actually pick? Continue reading →

CCA documents from VLCIA

All the CCA documents VLCIA provided in response to Matt Flumerfelt’s Open Records Request are on the LAKE website. I will continue posting what I see in them (in the category CCA), but you may find things in them I don’t. If you find something particularly interesting, please send it to the LAKE blog submission address or comment on the blog so we can all see it.

-jsq

Missing: CCA Submission of Preliminary Specifications

Has CCA supplied a key document required by the contract? If not, is the contract still valid?

According to “SCHEDULE 1.6.2 DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE” CCA was supposed to provide to VLCIA

Submission of Preliminary Specifications (Section 1.6.1)
No later than 6 months after receipt of the Survey
CCA did provide a Title Objection Letter 19 November 2010, and that was due “within 30 days of receipt of the Survey”. So these Preliminary Specifications were due about six months ago. Let’s see them!

If those specifications have not been received by VLCIA, maybe the contract with CCA is no longer valid.

Or maybe VLCIA already received the NTP and is moving on with implementing the project. Seems to me the community should be informed, one way or the other.

-jsq

How the Industrial Authority can stop the CCA private prison: no third extension by 13 March 2012

Apparently the Industrial Authority can end the contract for CCA’s private prison six weeks from now, by simply not doing anything until then.

CCA has already paid for two extensions on their Option Agreement for land purchase. The Second Extension Term was paid for in March 2010 and forwarded to the land owner. Here’s video of Col. Ricketts announcing it to the VLCIA board 15 March 2011. That second extension expires 13 March 2012, six weeks from today.

A Third Extension Term is possible, but has to be negotiated. Here’s what Purchase and Development Agreement of 17 August 201 says:

1.4.2.3. Third Extension Term. The Authority shall use commercially reasonable efforts to obtain an option for a third extension term of twelve (12) months (the “Third Extension Term“). In the event the Authority is able to obtain such extension option on terms and conditions such that any required earnest money to be paid by the Company in connection with the exercise of such extension option does not exceed $75,000, and there is no increase of the price of the Site or any other payments not already required by the Option Agreement, then the Authority shall enter into a written agreement (the “Third Extension Term“) with the Seller reflecting the terms and conditions of such extension option….
What happens if the Authority does not provide such an extension option? Continue reading →

CCA and the problem with Industrial Authority confidentiality agreements

In the confidentiality agreeement CCA and VLCIA signed way back on 17 August 2009, I see nothing that says the Industrial Authority can’t talk about CCA in general terms. And I see a lot of things that a governmental entity by state law can’t hide if the public requests them. And that VLCIA has now revealed. Which means the Industrial Authority has violated that agreement because state law required it to. So what does that say about the validity of other contracts VLCIA has signed with CCA? And what does it say about the practice of this governmental entity signing confidentiality agreements?

That agreement includes this legal boilerplate:

it will use any confidential, proprietary, or trade secret information to which it has access solely for the purpose set forth herein and that it will indefinitely protect the confidentiality of such information and will not directly or indirectly disclose, reproduce, distribute, transmit or transfer by any means in any form any confidential documents, information and/or trade secrets that AUTHORITY may have or acquire during the Evaluation Period.
There’s nothing in there that says VLCIA can’t even say in their board meetings that Project Excel is a private prison for CCA. And outside board meetings, some board members have no reluctance to acknowledge that.

Confidentiality agreements like that are normal between two business entities. They seem a little odd between a business entity and a governmental agency. For example, that Agreement continues:

For purposes of this Agreement, “confidential, proprietary, or trade secret information” includes, but is not limited to, marketing materials, conceptual site drawings and images, form contract agreements, the identities of business contacts and the relationships developed with such contacts during the Evaluation Period, proposed terms of purchase and sale, if any….
Yet many of those things are by their nature public records that VLCIA is required to hand over in response to an open records request, such as the one Matt Flumerfelt made which produced documents such as these: Continue reading →