Legal News

Calif. faces $8 billion tab for prison healthcare costs

By Jason Siegel

California, buried in a fiscal crisis that has the state budget short $17 billion and state workers protesting temporary pay cuts, found itself facing a new $8 billion tab from a court-appointed overseer of the state's prisons.

Clark Kelso, professor at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Calif., the court-appointed receiver, asked a federal judge in San Francisco Wednesday to seize $8 billion from the state treasury over the next five years to pay for construction of seven new prison medical facilities for the state's 170,000 inmates.

And Kelso wants the first installment of $3.1 billion within the next six weeks, Plata v. Schwarzenegger, C01-1351TEH.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrat-controlled Legislature have failed to reach agreement on how to resolve the budget gap of $17 billion on the new fiscal year that began July 1.

Meanwhile, the medical care at the state's 33 prisons has been found so lacking that it violates prisoners' constitutional rights.

Kelso told U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson in filings Wednesday, "It is with great reluctance, and yet a sense of firm conviction," that he seeks the $8 billion for construction.

The California state Senate has twice refused to approve the bill authorizing bond funding for the construction, based on the Republican Caucus's insistence that the funding be tied to changes in unrelated legislation.

Kelso wants the state to build 5,000 medical and 5,000 mental health beds for inmate healthcare.

To press the point, Kelso wants the Governor held in contempt and fines of $2 million a day, beginning immediately, if the state does not pay into the court-controlled account.

Apart from this dilemma, the state has nearly the double the inmates the prisons were built to hold. Henderson and two other judges are currently sitting on a panel to consider whether the population should be capped and thus forcing the state to release some inmates to ease overcrowding.

-- Pamela A. MacLean

LISTEN: "Kelso to Make Major Announcement about Prison Hospitals", KPCC Public Radio

LISTEN: "Calif. Prisons Receiver Asks Court to Force State to Pay Up", Capital Public Radio

"Judge Asked To Seize $8B From Calif. Treasury," Associated Press

"Federal overseer seeks to seize $8 billion for California prison healthcare," Los Angeles Times

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on August 14, 2008 (boomark / email).