CORRECTIONS IN BIND ONE MORE TIME

Capitol Report

Oklahoma City -- In an annual rite of spring, Oklahoma legislators vent
their frustration over the black hole of corrections funding. Then they
grit their teeth and peel off a few million dollars more so the prison
system can get by a little longer.

Just as certain every spring is a philosophical discussion of why prisons
are packed and the corrections department can't get by.

In February of this year, Corrections asked for $46.1 million in
supplemental funding and identified $34.5 million of that as "critical."
The rest was "important." Facing reality, the department whittled its
request to $30 million, then to $23 million.

A bleak financial picture for the state grew darker.

Tax collections came in lower than expected again, and the state finance
office said agency budgets were being trimmed 6.64 percent each for April,
May and June. For corrections, it meant losing $2.1 million of its $32.3
million April allocation.

Bills were coming due.

"I think it's important to pay our bills," said Sen. Kelly Haney,
D-Seminole, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

After a lot of talk the Senate voted last week for House Bill 2567, an
agreement to provide $9.8 million to finance the department's operations
for 30 days. The House accepted the Senate's amendments and sent the bill
to the governor.

Some senators wondered if the agency's proclivity for living on the edge
month to month would ever end.

"It'll last throughout eternity," said Sen. Herb Rozell, D-Tahlequah.

Instead of making monthly payments for use of private prisons, he argued,
the state could make a lease-purchase deal for the private facilities.

"In a few years we could own them," he said.

Sen. Frank Shurden, D-Henryetta, also complained about the use of private
prisons, the scrapping of the cap law allowing early release of some
prisoners and changes in inmate classifications that mandate where
prisoners must be incarcerated.

"I'm not going to vote to give them any more money," said Shurden.

Haney said corrections officials are "attempting to tighten their belts."
He said the department would take $700,000 from its prison industries fund
under the bill and was canceling $600,000 in equipment purchases.

Sen. Dick Wilkerson, D-Atwood, whose Public Safety and Judiciary
appropriations subcommittee hears the corrections' money requests, said
Shurden had a point in complaining about the classification system.

"It limits management," he said.

All homicides, for example, "must be in medium security or above regardless
of how long they've been there." Such inmates once might have been used as
trusties, he said.

Wilkerson said there's plenty of blame to go around for the problems of
corrections, including the Legislature, prosecutors and others who all
"believe they are doing the Lord's work."

A reason prisons are full, Wilkinson said, is because "all crime is not the
same" but politicians insist on talking about it generically. The top three
reasons Oklahoma locks up people, he said, are not murder, rape or assault
but related to substance abuse or distribution.

Corrections Director Ron Ward had been working on a fallback plan to make
do with less money.

He told Wilkerson's committee, "Unfortunately, it falls in the salaries and
benefits numbers."

Poignant Description

Sen. Angela Monson tried to describe the mind of a person with an
Intelligence Quotient of 70 or less.

The Oklahoma City Democrat said people with an IQ that low see things as a
child of 8 or 9 would see them. As an example, she said her own child was
just a little younger than that when she saw a black and white TV program
and asked if everything was black and white in bygone days.

"She meant were the trees black, was the grass black," Monson said, arguing
that to put to death someone with that kind of immature thinking would be
inhumane.

It isn't that they may not know right from wrong, she said, but they can
not process the consequences of their bad deeds.

Her bill to bar execution of people with an IQ below 70 and significant
functional limitations passed the Senate 32-15, but will go to a conference
committee. It passed the House by one vote, on the second try.

Opposition focused on ambiguity in defining the conditions necessary to
trigger the ban, whether it was necessary since a jury can take mental
capacity into account and on preservation of the death penalty.

Sen. Jonathan Nichols, R-Norman, warned it would be an election issue.

"I say if you vote for this bill you are against the death penalty," said
Nichols, a former assistant prosecutor. "I assert that if you put yourself
up there in green (a yes vote) you'll have to explain to your constituents
why you voted against the death penalty."

Several of his Republican colleagues did vote for it, including Sen. Brooks
Douglass of Oklahoma City, whose parents were murder victims. But Douglass
said if it came out of conference with broader restrictions against capital
punishment he would fight it.

Monson said a judge could call a pretrial hearing to determine the mental
ability of persons charged with capital crimes. A judge finding the
defendant severely retarded or developmentally disabled could then declare
the case not qualified for the death penalty.

Monson said she personally is opposed to capital punishment, but neither
she nor House author Opio Toure, D-Oklahoma City, had any hidden purpose in
House Bill 2635.