Prison director defends management style and budget

Jennifer Coleman

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999 | 8:59 a.m.

CARSON CITY - Lawmakers are challenging state prisons chief Bob Bayer's plans to privatize all inmate medical care, close one prison and open another in southern Nevada.

The privatization plan even put Bayer at odds with his own medical director, Dr. Ted D'Amico, during a budget subcommittee session Tuesday on the prison system's $312.4 million budget for the next two years.

With a 19 percent increase in the number of incarcerated women, and a nearly 6 percent increase in the men's population, Nevada prisons are operating at emergency levels, Bayer said.

But he wants to shut down the 601-inmate Southern Nevada Correctional Center at Jean. Inmates would go to the $83 million Cold Creek State Prison, also in southern Nevada, now under construction.

The first phase of Cold Creek, already approved, will add 1,000 beds to the prison system. Originally scheduled to open by June, it is now due to open by summer of 2000.

The state would save $10 million by laying off some employees at Jean and moving the rest, along with the inmates, to Cold Creek, Bayer has said.

Jean would then be leased out, relieving the state of the cost to maintain an empty prison and returning some money to the state.

But Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, reminded Bayer that the Cold Creek facility is over budget, behind schedule and doesn't even have a first-phase plans for a fence.

Bayer assured the legislators that fences and towers will be in place before the prison opens. But money for the fence is in second-phase funding that hasn't been approved yet.

Assembly Ways and Means Chairman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, said the plan to close Jean is being pushed without discussion of other options. He told Bayer not to think the plan is approved because Gov. Kenny Guinn endorsed it in his state of the state address.

"I'm suggesting you come up with another plan. Don't just tell us this is it and we have to eat it. We might as well close the budget and go home," Arberry said.

Bayer insisted that lawmakers already have the best plan but agreed to look into alternatives.

Legislators also quizzed Bayer on his cost-cutting plan to privatize statewide prison medical services. That's now limited to the state's maximum-security prison at Ely.

Guinn has said privatization of all prison medical services would cut 321 state jobs and save about $4.4 million over the next two years.

But state employees say they can save the state as much as the private firms promise if given the chance. At a previous budget hearing, medical employees said D'Amico had a five-year plan to turn the ailing department around.

By changing some procedures, D'Amico said he has helped save the state $20,000 a month on prescription drugs alone.

"We have trimmed costs tremendously. The staff is used to working this way now and we've only just begun," he said.

But D'Amico's five-year plan is detailed only in informal notes. Bayer said he was not informed about D'Amico's plan and couldn't get copies of them until after they had been leaked to legislators.

"Those employees in medical who I'm supposed to be able to trust are bootlegging that stuff out of the office, which is not appropriate," Bayer said.

"You want to call it bootleg, I call it information because I couldn't get it from you," Giunchigliani told Bayer. "It's b.s. to say it's bootleg."

Giunchigliani, chairwoman of the budget subcommittee, added that it would send a dangerous message to all state employees if the prison system privatized services after the employees worked to cut costs.

Bayer said he understood that medical staffers are fighting for their jobs but said: "I really, really believe that medical care would be more cost-effective by privatizing."