Budget analyst: Stop building prisons

Virginia and its localities should stop building more prisons and jails because a decade-long building program has led to undercrowding, a state budget analyst said Wednesday.

“There is no need to approve any additional prison or jail construction for the foreseeable future,“ Paul Van Lenten Jr. told members of the House Appropriations Committee and House Finance Committee.

As a cost-saving step, the General Assembly should consider delaying corrections projects or deferring operating costs for the next five years, he said.

That was good news for budget-writers looking for ways to save money in a budget that could be $1.6 billion out of balance by June 30, the end of the 2010 fiscal year.

Another looming budget problem—federal health-care reform—is so uncertain as to its cost effects on Virginia that the General Assembly is considering going into recess after it convenes Jan. 13 to await further action by Congress, said Del. Lacey E. Putney, I-Bedford.

Putney is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

State budget analyst Susan E. Massart, cautioning that the fate of the federal bills being considered by the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate remains up in the air, said each bill would appear to be more likely to push up health-care costs in Virginia than to bring them down.

Between 2014, when the program is scheduled to begin, and 2019 the extra cost to the state in Medicaid and the FAMIS plan for children (also known as CHIPS) would amount to $1 billion, in part because of newly eligible adults and children.

Concluding her review, Massart asked: “Will reforms bend the cost curve and slow health-care expenditures?“

She cited last week’s analysis by the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services , which estimated the House version would have “a relatively small savings impact.“ The House version is expected to be more costly than the Senate version.

Briefing the committee members on jail and prison costs, Van Lenten noted that by 2014, the local jail population will be 3,000 fewer than the 23,000 that was estimated several years ago. The prison population will be 5,000 fewer than the estimated 44,000, he said.

“There has been a marked decline in the number of serious drug charges,“ he said.

Since 1994, the state has spent $547 million on prison construction, Van Lenten said. A new prison costs $1 billion. Since 1993, 48 jail construction, expansion and renovation projects have cost $1 billion, with the state share being $469 million, he added.

Van Lenten said the St. Brides Correctional Center has 800 vacant beds, while a medium-security facility under construction in Grayson County will provide 1,038 added beds. At the local-jail level, 1,736 new beds came online in this biennium, he added.