Perdue's budget tries again to close inefficient but job-rich NC prisons targeted since 1992

Gov. Beverly Perdue's roadmap for narrowing the state's $3.4 billion budget gap for the coming year includes closing seven of the state's 79 prisons, traditionally some of the biggest employers in rural areas.

On the chopping block in Perdue's plan released Tuesday include the state's smallest prison — housing just 36 women in Wilmington who go to work during the day and return to their lockup at night — and a century-old former tuberculosis sanitarium in Hoke County that for years has served as a sort of nursing home for elderly inmates.

While all seven are described as old, small, and inefficient, each will have advocates arguing that the state jobs they represent are too important for their communities to lose. Five of the seven prisons have been recommended to be mothballed since a top-to-bottom study of state operations 16 years ago. Each time, advocates won the argument of local jobs over statewide efficiency.

"They each have their constituency. They each have economic benefits to their community. They are economic drivers," said Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, a co-chairwoman of the House budget-writing subcommittee on public safety.

Closing all seven minimum-security prisons could cut 541 jobs — more than a hundred of those now vacant — or more than half of the 1,033 positions Perdue would ax from the state's work force for the fiscal year starting July 1. The prison closings would save more than $24 million a year once completed in 2010.

Perdue's budget recommends closing the Wilmington Residential Facility for Women in November and McCain Correctional Hospital in May 2010. She also recommended closing the Umstead, Gates, Haywood, Union and Guilford Correctional Centers by mid-2010. All but McCain and Guilford were recommended for closing by the Government Performance Audit Committee in 1992.

Even in recommending closing prisons and consolidating employees and inmates into bigger, more cost-effective prisons, Perdue fretted about the effect of job losses in some rural counties.

"It is an economic development hit in rural areas," she said.

The head of the a 55,000-member union representing state workers said the Perdue administration assured him that employees whose jobs are eliminated would be offered another state job within 35 miles of their former worksite. The question now is whether the General Assembly will go ahead and close the prisons, State Employees Association of North Carolina executive director Dana Cope said.

"I think every governor (since 1992) suggested these closures in their budgets and the General Assembly has never taken the steps to actually close them. This is not new to those particular facilities," Cope said.

The prisons employed 432 workers as of last week, Correction Department spokesman Keith Acree said. The largest is McCain, bordering Fort Bragg in Hoke County, with a staff of 224 overseeing 341 inmates. About 30 of the inmates are hospitalized though many others are over-60 and need regular nursing care, Acree said.

All but the Wilmington and Haywood cost more in 2008 than the $60.87 daily average cost for keeping an inmate in a minimum-security state prison, a Correction Department report said.