Panel rejects Gibbons’ plan to close prison

By Cy Ryan

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 | 11:14 a.m.

CARSON CITY – A legislative budget subcommittee has rejected plans by Gov. Jim Gibbons to close the more than 140-year-old Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

The subcommittee also voted down a proposal to close the prison conservation camp in Tonopah.

In its decisions, the subcommittee agreed to delay the opening of another phase of the High Desert State Prison in Clark County, which would add more than 550 beds. It won’t open until September 2011 under the plan adopted by the subcommittee.

Howard Skolnik, director of the state Department of Corrections, said the governor’s recommendation would have shut down 841 inmate beds and eliminated 198 staff members.

The subcommittee noted that the prison would still need to operate the license plate factory, mattress factory and the printing/book bindery shop. Inmates from other prisons would have had to run these facilities. The state Public Works Board has estimated the cost of a new building for just the license plate factory at $3.5 million.

The closure of the state prison would also have meant building a new execution chamber, which would not be ready until 2011.

The decisions by the subcommittee, composed of members of the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means Committees, added about $21 million to the cost of operating the prison system statewide.

The prison is trying to lease the Southern Nevada Correctional Center in Clark County and the governor included $11 million in revenue from the lease in his proposed budget.

But so far there are no firm offers and the state may not collect the $11 million during the next two years. Negotiations with the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency have stalled. The state put the prison lease out to bid but received only one inquiry. Alaska has express some interest in sending its inmates to Southern Nevada.

There was some good fiscal news. The governor’s budget, built last year, had estimated an increase in inmates of 313 to a total population of 13,696 in fiscal 2010. But the latest figures show there will by 494 fewer convicts next fiscal year, or a 3.7 percent drop.