Pay raises not on table despite prison staffing shortage

State paid record $42M in overtime in 2017

MADISON - Facing ballooning overtime costs amid a stubborn staffing shortage in Wisconsin prisons, lawmakers in control of state government are not yet putting forward a pay bump to entice new correctional officers.

Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislative leaders acknowledge that having too few workers in state prisons is a long-standing challenge, but none are voicing support for putting more money into salaries or benefits following a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report showing staffing shortages opened the door for more than 500 state workers — most of them at the Department of Corrections — to make more than $20,000 in overtime last year.

Of those workers, four made more than $160,000 with overtime, including Bradley Thiede, a correctional officer at Redgranite Correctional Institution in Waushara County, who earned

$175,000 in 2017 by working 95 hours a week on average. The state paid a record $42 million in overtime in 2017.

Democrats say the longstanding staffing issues illustrate Walker’s lack of long-term strategy for the state’s corrections system. Some are demanding a new pay structure be adopted to fully staff prisons.

“We have an obligation if we are going to commit people who are mentally ill, if we are going to incarcerate people who have broken the law, to make sure that their safety is there and the men and women that we employ are safe as well, and right now we’re not and the reality is that costs money,” said Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz (DOshkosh).

GOP sites strong economy

But Republican leaders say prison officials have offered current and prospective employees significant financial incentives to cure the staffing problems, and that the strong economy exacerbates the challenge in hiring new workers.

“With a record low 2.8% unemployment rate and more people working in Wisconsin than ever before, we can’t afford to have anyone on the sidelines,” Walker spokeswoman Amy Hasenberg said.

“The worker shortage is a nationwide challenge, and we will continue our historic investments in worker training and education moving forward to help get more people into the workforce.”

Hasenberg also noted the state has spent $358 million on worker training since 2011 and by next year will have raised starting wages for correctional officers by 9.5% since 2016.

State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (DMiddleton) said Walker didn’t have a handle on the cause of the rising overtime. A low unemployment rate alone does not explain the problem, he said.

“He’s either lying or he just doesn’t understand the facts,” Erpenbach said.

Act 10 blamed

He believes the problem is rooted in Act 10, the 2011 law that all but eliminated collective bargaining for most public workers.

Employees want to be able to negotiate over their working conditions, benefits, wages and safety issues, Erpenbach said.

Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said supervisors are expected to consult with their workers on the best ways to safely run the state’s prisons.

The agency has improved safety by providing more training, he said.

Wisconsin is not alone in facing staff shortages at prisons, Cook noted.

In recent months, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has tried to combat the problem with raises and incentives.

New hires are getting $2,000 signing bonuses at some prisons and some officers are temporarily receiving an extra $1 an hour at the most understaffed prisons.

Officers at all prisons got an 80-cent-per-hour pay bump in 2016 and their starting wages, now $16 an hour, are set to increase to $16.65 an hour by January.

GOP Rep. John Nygren of Marinette, co-chairman of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, said he wants to see how planned raises play out before deciding whether wages need to be raised further.

“Since most of these initiatives have yet to be fully implemented or have only been in place for less than a year, I would like to evaluate their impact on the situation before making a reactionary decision,” he said in a statement. “As we begin work on the next state budget we will continue to monitor the situation and work with DOC.”

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said state officials could try increasing wages and benefits, but the nature of the job of a correctional officer will always be a hurdle if there are less-stressful alternatives.

“You can always look at wages and benefits and try to pump those up but I think in the environment that we’re operating in, it’s gonna be tough,” Fitzgerald said. “I don’t know that that’s the solution right now.”

The Democrats seeking to challenge Walker said the governor didn’t have a handle on the problem and they would take a new approach if elected.

Former state Democratic Party Chairman Matt Flynn said he would pardon nonviolent drug offenders and reduce sentences to bring down the prison population — thus reducing the workers needed to staff prisons.

“I’m going to pardon a lot of people to take the strain off the staff,” he said.

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said the governor needed to hire “competent managers, not political hacks.”

Campaign finance reform activist Mike McCabe called for reducing the prison population and raising officer wages. Former state Rep. Kelda Roys of Madison and firefighters union President Mahlon Mitchell called for repealing Act 10.

Also running are state schools Superintendent Tony Evers, state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout of Alma and attorney Josh Pade. An Aug. 14 primary will determine which of them will challenge Walker.

New juvenile system coming

The staffing shortages and overtime costs come as state officials are developing a new juvenile corrections system that would replace a single prison for juvenile offenders with smaller facilities around the state, some run by counties and some run by the Department of Corrections.

In other states that have adopted a similar system of juvenile facilities, the smaller prisons often require more staff per inmate than larger prisons.

The new system is being created as a direct response to years of unsafe conditions at the Irma youth prison for staff and for inmates — problems that have resulted in millions of dollars being paid by taxpayers to settle lawsuits brought by former inmates and are at the center of a three-year federal investigation.

The prison, Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, has been short-staffed for years, with some workers spending as many as 16 hours at work in one day.

Hintz said he hopes a committee tasked to provide DOC with guidance on how to implement the new juvenile corrections system will incorporate measures that will prevent staffing problems at the new prisons, but noted without a full staff it’s hard to anticipate the new facilities won’t run into the same problems.

“That was the one thing that we really took away when we went up to Lincoln Hills … it’s all related to staffing,” he said.