Senate panel gives prison staffers access to inmate
funds
BRENDAN RILEY, Associated
Press Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 1999
(05-12) 14:40 PDT CARSON CITY (AP) -- A Senate panel voted Wednesday to divert some money from prisoner welfare to perks for prison staffers, such as Christmas parties, summer picnics and other goodies.
Finance Committee members approved AB289 with an amendment stating that revenue from vending machines in employee areas of the prison system can be used for employee purposes.
That's a major change in the bill, which emerged from the Assembly with a flat requirement that prison vending machine revenue be used for the benefit of inmates.
The perk for the prison staffers, not available at other state agencies, has been used to pay for microwaves and refrigerators for guards at their posts, flowers for funerals of deceased prison employees and plaques for retirees.
But when AB289 was discussed in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, panel members said the revenue from the vending machines in the prisons was supposed to be used for such things as inmate medical care and their law libraries.
Prison employees countered that the fund helps build morale in the system and asked that the benefits be continued.
The practice has been going on since 1992 when the state Prison Board, made up of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state, changed the rules to shift the money away from the inmates and into employee benefits.
The Legislative Counsel Bureau, in a legal opinion sought by the Ways and Means fiscal staff, said it's illegal under current law to divert the money. But there's another opinion from Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa saying that the board acted within the law.
Ways and Means was told that more than $100,000 has gone for employee parties and other things every year. At Southern Desert Correctional Center alone, an employee fund totaled $26,000.
The vending machines are in visiting rooms and in guards' muster rooms at prisons. And it's the employees and visitors who spend the most money in the machines, prison employees argued.
Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, who pushed AB289 in its original form, said the Senate Finance action was a surprise and ``we'll have difficulty over here with it.''
Giunchigliani complained that the Finance action makes a change in a budget that already had been closed, and also represents ``a huge policy decision'' that benefits one group of state workers over others not working for the state Prisons Department.