In two years, the legislature went from denial to doing something
about the unsupportable costs of Georgia’s prison system.
The Georgia prison population is already plumetting, and will drop more.
This makes a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia an even worse business deal.
If it ever opens, it probably will close.
As Georgia lawmakers desperately search for ways to slash spending,
they are not debating an option taken by other states: cutting the
prison population.
Georgia operates the fifth-largest prison system in the nation, at a
cost of $1 billion a year. The job of overseeing 60,000 inmates and
150,000 felons on probation consumes 1 of every 17 state dollars.
The state’s prison population has jumped by more than a quarter in
the past decade and officials expect the number of state inmates to
continue to creep upward. Georgia has resorted to measures other
than reducing the prison population to keep corrections spending
under control.
Do you want to live in a prison colony?
Help us say, CCA Go Away!
Join us 5PM Tuesday March 6th 2012 at the private prison site (Dasher-Johnson
Road off US 84 at Inner Perimeter) for a motorcade by Valdosta City
Hall to the Industrial Authority offices: for education and against the
private prison.
When:
5PM (rush hour) Tuesday March 6th
How:
Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles
Who:
Everybody is invited
What:
Oppose the Private Prison
From:
Proposed Private Prison Site
US 84 @ Inner Perimeter Road
(Staging on Dasher-Johnson Road next to US 84)
By way of:
Valdosta City Hall
Valdosta City Council Work Session
Honk to say No CCA!
To:
Industrial Authority Office
2110 N. Patterson Street
(Patterson at Park Avenue)
Bring a sign: No Private Prisons!
Contact:
noprivateprisons@gmail.com
Winn Roberson, 229-630-2339, winnroberson@bellsouth.net
John S. Quarterman, 229-242-0102, politics@quarterman.org
Winn Roberson read the newspaper Friday (February 24th)
and realized the prison site
was down the street from him, so the news finally sunk in.
This motorcade was his idea to drive the point across to the
Industrial Authority: we don’t want a private prison!
John S. Quarterman lives about as far away from the prison site
as you can get in Lowndes County, but realizes it will affect
everybody for many counties around.
So let’s say CCA Go Away!
Former Sheriff Paulk luke-warm; Sheriff Prine completely opposed.
Water and sewer, wetlands, federal funding: all hurdles, says Paulk.
Sheriff’s Association also opposed, says Prine.
More in the VDT article.
Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine has also shared his thoughts
on the private prison industry:
“If I’m going to house an inmate and if I’m going to be responsible,
I’d rather them be in my facility not a private prison,”
said Prine.
“If I’m going to be responsible for them
I want them to be within my reach.
the Sheriff’s Association
feels the same way I do.
I’d say the large majority of Sheriff’s feel the same way about this.
I don’t want a private facility handling my prisoners.”
“If those signatures and calls are making any impression
on the Authority they certainly don’t admit to it,”
said Quarterman.
“This is another Lofton (Brad Lofton, former
Authority executive director) project.
It’d be nice if the Industrial Authority represented the community
they were located in.”
Do you want the Industrial Authority to notice?
You can sign the
the petition,
or send VLCIA your own letter,
or write a letter to the editor to the VDT, or….
CCA has
a contract
to buy
the private prison site from a private landowner.
But who did that landowner get the site from?
The Industrial Authority!
And the sale prices involved are rather interesting: the landowner gets almost 100% profit in five years.
One person I showed them to immediately said, “sweetheart deal.”
What do you think?
The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA)
bought the site back in 1998 for $1,243,200, and
sold it to the landowner in 2007 for 1,463,512, which is an increase of
about 18%
in almost 10 years or about 2% per year.
CCA can buy it from the landowner in 2012 for $2,907,000,
for an increase of 99% in about five years or almost 20% per year.
Which is far more than the 20% in five years or about 4% per year shown by the assessed value.
And this remarkable surge in the price of that land
is during the worst real estate market since the Great Depression.
CCA’s CEO Damon Hininger stands to benefit should the states provide
him with prisons well-stocked with prisoners. In 2010, for example,
his total compensation equaled $3,266,387.
4. Damon T. Hininger
Corrections Corporation of America
Market cap: $2.83 billion
Age: 40
Industry: Property management
How do you like that euphemism?
“Property management.”
Does that refer to the real estate, or to the prisoners?
Or maybe to captive local government agencies that cede CCA
“absolute discretion”?
Valdosta City Council and Mayor, who may not have been following the private prison issue,
now know about it and are aware that they are all implicated in the private prison
decision, due to events at the Industrial Authority board meeting
and the Valdosta City Council meeting, both Thursday 23 February 2012.
After remarking that I’d rather be talking about the additional solar panels
recently installed on my farm workshop up here in the north end of the county,
I recapped the
case against a private prison
and referred the Valdosta City Council to
my LTE in the VDT of that morning
(Thursday 23 February 2012).
I remarked that I was disappointed the Industrial Authority
hadn’t done anything to stop the prison at its meeting earlier that same day.
Since they might be wondering what all this had to do with them, I pointed out that,
if I could use the word,
they were all implicated as mayor and council
in the private prison decision because
Jay Hollis, CCA’s Manager of Site Acquisition, in his Valdosta-Lowndes County, GA / CCA Partnership: Prepared Remarks of August 2010,
lavishly praised the Lowndes County Commission and Chairman and the
Valdosta City Council and mayor.
Although the mayor was different now, and maybe some of the council,
nonetheless it was the same offices of council and mayor, still implicated.
I asked for their opinions on that subject.
Per their custom, they did not offer any at that time.
So, maybe we’ll hear from them later.
Or maybe the Industrial Authority board will hear from them….
Valdosta Mayor and Council are implicated in the private prison —John S. Quarterman @ VCC 2012 02 23
VSEB, employment,
Regular Session, Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 23 February 2012.
Videos by George Boston Rhynes for K.V.C.I., the bostongbr on YouTube.
The only thing a board member said about it was Chairman Roy Copeland
reminding me that the board didn’t answer questions in Citizens Wishing
to be Heard.
Col. Ricketts added that in staff’s discussions with CCA,
CCA had indicated they were mulling it over internally, and
VLCIA should “stand by” for CCA’s next move.
That’s right, your local Industrial Authority, whose staff and land purchases
are funded by your tax dollars, should stand by waiting for a private
prison company to tell them what to do.
And the Industrial Authority board’s silence is an answer:
they said nothing different from their previous vote for the contract
to bring in this private prison;
nothing different from their previous acceptance
of the first and second option extensions;
and nothing in objection to what Col. Ricketts said.
So your tax-supported Industrial Authority wants a private prison in
Lowndes County, Georgia.
Do you want that?
Do you want a private prison with fewer guards per prisoner
Continue reading →
Do you know why the county sold this property for less than the assessed
price to the current owner in 2007 minus the wetlands that interject? Did
they know it would be considered for a private prison at that time? Now
the current owner will make the million dollar profit instead of the
county. Since this is considered industrial park acerage owned by the
county why would the county sell it if an industry/business was not
promised at that time? What is the 100 acres the development agreement
says the owner will be given? Is that the 119 acres of wetlands? If
the county decides not to allow the private prison what happens to the
earnest money that has been deposited to date since that would not be
an action by the buyer or the seller?
The seller was not the Lowndes County Commission, which would start with
“LOWNDES COUNTY”, and it’s not the City of Valdosta, which wouldn’t be
hyphenated with the county name like that.
Could it be the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority?
Industrial Authority Executive Director Andrea Schruijer told me to expect
their board to say something at their 2PM Thursday board meeting about the
private prison Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) wants to build
on US 84 at Perimeter Road. If they don’t give CCA another extension,
the contract expires March 13th.
There’s still time to contact them, (229) 259-9972.
Or go to their board meeting at 101 North Ashley Street,
2PM Thursday February 23rd.
A private prison would not increase employment in Lowndes County. It
would not even save the state money. And it would have high risk
of closing after or even before it opened, because of escapes and
inmate disturbances, and most importantly because the state and federal
governments can no longer afford to incarcerate so many people. That would
leave us and the state holding the bag for any investment in building it.
Outsourcing public justice for private profit at taxpayer expense is
not only bad business, we the taxpayers can’t afford to pay for it while
public education is under increasing budgetary pressure.
As members of the local community, we do not wish to live in a private
prison colony, with the attendant risks of inmate violence and escape,
and the accompanying public opprobrium that would drive away the
knowledge-based workers we claim to be trying to attract.
Finally, public justice should not be a matter of private profit.
John S. Quarterman
lives in Lowndes County
You may recognize the wording from the
petition.
You can always write your own letter with your own reasons.
Yesterday Andrea Schruijer promised to get an agenda for
tomorrow’s 2PM Thursday 23 February 2012 Industrial Authority board meeting (101 N. Ashley Street)
online.
It’s
there,
and it has content!
What it does not have is any mention of
anything about Project Excel, or CCA, or the private prison,
even though Ms. Schruijer told me yesterday to expect the board
to say something about that.
You can still
express your opinion to them before then.
And since this agenda says
**TENTATIVE**
maybe that item will get added before tomorrow afternoon.
What this agenda does have is numerous specific items
under the usual broad headers such as
Existing Industry/Project Report.
So instead of listening to Col. Ricketts
and trying to figure out what he’s talking about,
you can see such things as
“e-Snychronist® Existing Industry Retention
and Expansion business information system (BIS)” in writing.
You still don’t see names of the
“five (5) Prospects”
or the “three (3) companies that are developing expansion plans”.
Maybe I buy the competitive information argument for the prospects,
but I’m not so sure about the three expanding companies, especially
if they’re already local.
And considering the things VLCIA has tried to sneak in under cover
of not mentioning competitive information, such as biomass and a private prison,
I’m not sure I buy that argument at all.
Also on the plus side, the agenda includes an actual schedule for bids
Continue reading →
As Georgia lawmakers desperately search for ways to slash spending, they are not debating an option taken by other states: cutting the prison population.
cost of $1 billion a year. The job of overseeing 60,000 inmates and 150,000 felons on probation consumes 1 of every 17 state dollars.
