Bond issues being used in a good way

TWO state agencies charged with tending to criminal offenders are pouring millions of dollars into their facilities, the result of lawmakers’ wise decision to approve the use of bonds after several years of taking a “just say no” approach to this option.

The Department of Corrections will use $116.5 million in bonds to pay for things ranging from new locks on cell doors to new roofs, lighting and plumbing at the state’s aging prisons. The DOC’s board approved the bond plans at a meeting late last month.

Meanwhile the Office of Juvenile Affairs held a groundbreaking last week on the first phase of a new campus for juvenile offenders. The Legislature this year authorized issuing up to $45 million in bonds to cover cost of construction.

For far too long, the Republican-controlled Legislature — particularly conservative House members — rejected nearly all requests to increase the state’s bonded indebtedness. They pointed to the problems associated with deficit spending in Washington, D.C., and vowed not to follow that poor example in Oklahoma. Those arguments carried the day as efforts to use bonds to build a new medical examiner’s office or repair the Capitol building were defeated.

Yet that strategy was exposed as purely political when, a month after rejecting a $160 million bond plan to renovate the Capitol, the Legislature late in the 2014 session approved a $120 million bond package. The change of heart came after a chunk of concrete fell through a ceiling and crashed into a basement office.

That renovation is now well underway. And this year, the Legislature approved the use of bonds for various projects including those by the DOC and the Office of Juvenile Affairs.

The OJA project will place on one campus youths who have been living in secure facilities at three locations — Tecumseh and Manitou (for boys) and Norman (for girls). Those facilities, OJA executive director Steve Buck notes, are old, retrofitted buildings whose design — open bays, no access to natural light, high noise levels — are wholly inadequate.

“We have to encourage our young people that their lives are worth investing in,” Buck said. “When you’re walking across a campus with broken sidewalks and air conditioning that’s inconsistent at best and aging buildings, that’s not the message we’re sending.”

Under the renovation, buildings on the Tecumseh campus will be refurbished and new cottages will be built. The plan is to build up to nine 16-bed cottages.

Buck says having one campus instead of three will save the state money. The OJA also expects to be able to pay the bonds off without needing increased appropriations, Buck said.

The juveniles housed in OJA’s secure facilities are the state’s most dangerous, and thus are at the highest risk of eventually winding up in DOC custody. However, it’s also true that most of these teenagers will return to society. OJA has charter schools at Tecumseh and Manitou, and makes vocational training and other services available. Having a first-rate, next-generation campus, one Buck says is intended to provide a much more therapeutic environment for clients, should only help with that important transition.

These and the DOC bonds figure to be money well spent. They represent a welcome example of lawmakers wising up and doing the right thing by taxpayers.