Lawmakers question idea of Alabama prison leases

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama lawmakers say they have questions about Gov. Kay Ivey’s proposal to sign leases for three prisons that would be built by private companies as a partial solution to the state’s ongoing prison crisis.

The governor’s administration is pursuing a plan to hire private companies to build the three prisons, which would then be leased back to the state and run by the Department of Corrections.

Republican legislative leaders said they are not objecting to the proposal at this time but that they want to make sure the leases do not become a drain on the state’s budget.

“We have questions. Locations? Cost?” House Speaker Mac McCutcheon said. “There’s still a lot of questions out there that need to be answered, and we’re working with the governor’s office on that.”

The U.S. Justice Department last year said violent and crowded conditions in Alabama prisons violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Justice Department said understaffing and crowding were primary drivers of the violence, but it also mentioned the need to improve facility conditions.

The proposals from three developer teams are due April 30. Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn said the state could make an award in late summer after evaluating the proposals.

Ivey said the state can pay a maximum of $78 million a year to lease the three prisons, money that is supposed to be made available by savings from closing existing prisons.

“They build it and they maintain it. And then the state operates it and the state will pay a lease back,” Ivey said.

The governor said it is clear the state needs new prisons. Alabama recently announced it was largely shuttering Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore because of infrastructure problems.

“It’s more cost-effective in the long run to build new prisons than it is to try to maintain these old, dilapidated, falling-out things like what happened to Holman and its infrastructure,” Ivey said.

Signing a lease, rather than borrowing the money for construction, would bypass the need for legislative approval.

Alabama lawmakers twice debated a similar plan, in which the state would build the prisons rather than lease them, but the measures failed because of concerns about cost and the closures of existing prisons in legislators’ districts.

“They had two shots,” Ivey said.

Ivey said the executive branch will handle the construction of the prisons, which “takes the legislator off the hook.”

Asked if lawmakers were comfortable with the lease proposal, Senate President Pro Tempore Del Marsh replied: “not completely.”

“Let’s be honest. Until we can see actual numbers on what it’s going to cost, it’s a little discomfort. That is going to have to come out of the general fund,” Marsh said.

State Rep. Chris England, a Democrat, said there are “some significant legal questions that have to be answered” about how the leases would work.