LITTLE ROCK — To staff the recently completed space for 360 more inmates at the Ouachita River Unit in Malvern, the Arkansas Department of Correction will reduce spending on maintenance and operations at other prisons and eliminate service bonuses for its employees.
The cuts, along with an infusion of $5.8 million in onetime money from Gov. Mike Beebe’s contingency fund, are included in the department’s $301 million budget that the Board of Corrections unanimously approved Tuesday for fiscal 2011, which begins Thursday. The cuts will allow the department to continue keeping prisoners in the new barracks at the Malvern lockup, which it has been paying to staff by not filling openings at other prisons.
The budget does not include any money to staff a 300-bed expansion at the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County, which is expected to be completed within a few months. Correction Department officials said they plan to ask the state Legislature, which meets in January, for money to staff that expansion.
With no discussion, the board approved the budget at a meeting in Little Rock.
In the same meeting, the panel voted to hire interim Director Ray Hobbs as the department’s director. He is the first black director in the department’s history and replaces Larry Norris, who retired in January.
“I’m humbled, and I’m looking forward to carrying out that mission and that vision, and looking to a good,solid relationship,” Hobbs said during a break in the meeting.
Facing a steadily increasing prison population, the department has struggled to find money to open new prison space while also reducing its budget to accommodate lower-than-expected tax collections.
In April, Hobbs said that if the state’s inmate population continues to grow, prison officials will likely ask the Legislature next year for funding to staff space for 1,800 to 2,000 more inmates.
Asked Tuesday whether the department still plans to pursue that request, he said, “I don’t want to speak to that right now.”
“We’re just trying to find ways to be more efficient with our beds and more flexible,” Hobbs said.
On Tuesday, Arkansas’ prison population was 15,571. That included 1,825 inmates sentenced to prison but who remained in county jails because no prison space is available.
To meet the demand for more prison space, the department is building a 782-bed addition to the Ouachita River Unit in Malvern. A 360-bed portion of the unit was completed in December. It sat empty until May because of a lack of prison manpower.
Staffing to accommodate the 360 more inmates at Malvern is expected to cost almost $3.7 million next year. To offset that cost, the Board of Corrections approved reducing spending on maintenance and operations by almost $3 million, and saving just over $1 million by eliminating years-of-service annual bonuses of a few hundred dollars each for employees.
The department also expects to receive $5.8 million from Beebe’s $40 million contingency fund.
Assistant Director Sheila Sharp told board members Tuesday that early next year the department will ask the state Legislature for money to restore the curtailed maintenance and operations funds and to pay for the expanded operations at the Ouachita River and Cummins units.
Even with the cuts, the department’s budget for next year, based on funding approved in the 2009 legislative session, is 4 percent higher than this year’s core operating budget of $288.4 million.
The department has not yet submitted its fiscal 2012 and 2013 budget proposals to the Corrections Board in preparation for the 2011 legislative session.
Hobbs, 58, has been with the department 35 years, beginning as a corrections officer at the Tucker Unit. He has served as assistant warden, warden and assistant director, and was the department’s chief deputy director for nine years.
Correction Department spokesman Dina Tyler credited him with leading the department’s efforts to get all its facilities accredited by the American Correctional Association.
Hobbs also led efforts to reduce sexual assaults in prisons and to get the department into compliance with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, Tyler said. That included establishing an inmate hot-line to report sexual assaults and creating a “crisis response team” made up of counselors, chaplains and investigators to respond to reports of sexual abuse.
The vote to hire Hobbs as director came after a closed session at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting. Board Chairman Benny Magness said board members had been watching Hobbs’ performance and were pleased with what they saw.
Magness said he consulted with Beebe a couple of weeks ago, and Beebe approved of the choice.
Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said Tuesday that the governor considered it a “good decision.”
Hobbs has “proved himself to be a very capable administrator, and we think he’ll do a good job leading the department,” DeCample said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/30/2010