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| Empty Prison Leaves Wis. Town Holding the Bag |
| By La Crosse Tribune |
| Published: 03/20/2003 |
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This central Wisconsin town thought it had finally won the prison lottery back in 1998 when the state announced it would build a facility on city land on the edge of town. Today, with the $46 million state prison finished but empty, officials here feel jilted and angry. Mayor Lloyd Chase will ask the City Council tonight to pass a resolution asking the state to reimburse the city for the $2.25 million it spent in trying bring more than 300 state jobs to the most economically depressed part of the state. 'Basically, our approach is that if the state isn't opening it in 2004, we want to be reimbursed,' Chase said. The action comes after years of frustration, as the city has seen Gov. Scott McCallum, then Gov. Jim Doyle delay the prison opening due to budget problems. Adding to the anger are the Legislature's 2001 vote to spend $82 million to buy and open a privately built prison in Stanley, and the $165,665 a day the state currently spends to house prisoners in other states. 'Unemployment is so high here, it could have been a real savior,' said Linda Kohler, who manages a convenience store in downtown New Lisbon. 'I feel we've been left out of the equation - New Lisbon put out a lot to get that prison, and now it's just sitting there.' This is certainly not what New Lisbon officials thought would happen when they actively pursued the prisons the state was building as it ran out of room in the mid-1990s. Back then, New Lisbon bought 40 acres of land across Interstate 90-94 from town and entered the derby for the new Supermax prison. 'The community itself really got behind the bid and pushed really hard,' recalled Ken Southworth, mayor of New Lisbon from 1990 to 2000. 'The referendum passed overwhelmingly. There were a lot of long faces around here when we lost out to Boscobel.' The city tried for the next state prison, a facility for sex offenders, but lost to Redgranite. But the third time was the charm and in September 1998, the state awarded the site of a 250-bed prison to New Lisbon. New Lisbon agreed to expand its sewage treatment system, to acquire more land when the state needed it and to extend utilities to the site. The state spent $46 million to build the prison, which it expanded to 500 beds and finished in November 2001. But instead of providing more than 300 state jobs in a depressed county, the New Lisbon Correctional Center has a skeleton crew charged with duties such as flushing the toilets every Friday so the plumbing doesn't seize up. 'New Lisbon promised a number of things and lived up to all its promises,' Southworth said. 'The state has not lived up to its promises.' Nick Onyszczak, New Lisbon city administrator, said the city has spent $1.5 million and will spend at least another $650,000 this year on improvements related to the prison. He said the city cannot even operate part of its new sewage treatment system because the expected additional water flow from the prison hasn't materialized. 'You take a community of 1,500 people, it's hard to absorb those kind of costs,' Onyszczak said. 'It isn't like they put it (the prison) in Madison or Milwaukee.' Chase said he's bothered that the state continues to spend money supporting prison jobs in other states, while Juneau County limps along with a 11.2 percent unemployment rate, the worst in the state and nearly double the state's unadjusted rate of 6.3 percent. The county has lost more than 800 jobs in recent years. 'When the economy is in a downturn, you'd think you want to spend that money in your own economy,' Chase said. But Gov. Doyle said the state, which faces a $3.2 billion deficit, simply can't afford to open new prisons in New Lisbon and Chippewa Falls. 'Here is the situation: we're sitting without any money, and we have to make decisions right now,' Doyle told the Wisconsin State Journal editorial board. 'People say, 'Why don't you spend and invest in the future,' and we've tried to do a fair amount of that, but you've got to have a dollar to invest, and now, we don't even have that dollar to invest. 'Maybe an economist can look at this more broadly. But we don't have the $36 million that it takes to open those (prisons).' The state pays a flat rate of $48.50 per inmate per day to Corrections Corporations of America to house more than 3,000 prisoners in other states, said Dale Jellings, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. That's much cheaper from a budgeting perspective than the $71.19 average daily cost to keep an adult inmate in state, Jellings said. |
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