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| Budget Cutbacks May Force Ohio to Close Prison |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/22/2001 |
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State-ordered budget cuts could force one prison and four of Ohio's nine mental hospitals to close, agency directors said. Gov. Bob Taft last week ordered most state agencies to cut budgets by 6 percent because of a larger-than-expected deficit of $600 million. The departments claiming to be hardest hit are those required to make smaller cuts -- the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the Department of Mental Health must reduce their budgets by 3 percent. A 3 percent cut would result in multiple prison closings, prisons Director Reginald Wilkinson said yesterday. He said he doesn't expect to receive that size cut and instead will face closing individual units within prisons. He said four prisons won't be considered for closing: the state's supermax prison in Youngstown; the Corrections Medical Center in Columbus; the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville; and the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville. 'We certainly are going to be very cautious about which facilities are likely,'' Wilkinson said. 'We'll pick ones with which we'll save the most money or target the ones with the most overhead.'' About 15,000 employees work in 32 of 34 state prisons housing 44,737 inmates. There are two state-owned, privately run prisons. Meanwhile, Michael F. Hogan, mental health director, said the agency is considering closing as many as four of the nine state mental hospitals. Terry Russell, executive director of the Ohio chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said if hospitals are closed, patients will have to live with their families because they have nowhere else to go. 'We're really alarmed,'' Peter Wray said. "This is going to be bad for security, bad for the safety of employees and bad for the safety of the public.'' |
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