Senate subcommittee votes against funds for prison

JUNEAU — The state senate subcommittee working on the Department of Corrections budget recommended holding back $3.6 million allocated to phasing in the Goose Creek Correctional Center at Point MacKenzie Thursday.

“I feel I would not be doing my part if I did not put that on the record that I’m in total disagreement with that,” subcommittee member Linda Menard (R-Wasilla) said at the meeting, according to online audio recordings of the meeting posted to the Legislature’s website.

Menard was the lone dissenting voice and described the move as “unreasonable.”

Subcommittee chair Johnny Ellis (D-Anchorage) said that the recommendation wasn’t the final word on the funding.

“I would just state on the record that this is a process,” Ellis said. The recommendations were just that — recommendations — to be sent to the full finance committee, then to the full senate.

And, since the House of Representatives has this money in its budget, it will very likely be an item that has to be hashed out when a conference committee of senate and house members is appointed to reconcile the two budgets.

“There will be discussion at the conference table no doubt,” Ellis said.

Goose Creek has lately come under fire from legislators who say the cost is wildly expensive and question whether it might be cheaper just to mothball the facility and continue housing Alaskan inmates out of state.

The Department of Corrections has long noted that housing prisoners in state would be more expensive than sending them Outside. Legislators seem mostly to be concerned about exactly how much more expensive it will be.