Articles
& News
March 4, 2009
No time for retreat in the face of budget restraints
-
Opinion
Oregonians understand that Oregon faces
significant financial difficulties and the need to make changes to
address these challenges. Yet voters have made it clear, with
Measure 57, that they want to see better accountability for drug
crimes and crimes such as identity theft, burglary and auto theft.
Rather than throw away Measure 57, or put
it in a deep freeze, the Legislature should promptly take several
steps to maintain public safety at a lower cost.
First, the Department of Corrections should
rent private prison facilities, out of state, and transfer all
prison inmates who have Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds to
those facilities. I have always opposed the use of rental prisons
because they provide insufficient rehabilitation services. But there
is no reason to focus on rehabilitation for prison inmates who are
going to be deported the moment they are released.
Second, the Department of Corrections needs
to partner with state agencies to put Measure 57 inmates into
lower-security custody combined with work programs, in which inmates
can get training while helping agencies maintain their mission
despite budget shortfalls. Every state agency with a biennial budget
of more than $1 million should designate one person to act as a
prison work coordinator and to determine agency activities that can
be carried out with the assistance of low-cost and lower-risk prison
inmates.
Third, the Department of Corrections should
work with the federal government to place many more inmates in
environmental restoration and reforestation projects. Funds from the
federal stimulus package can be used to finance prison work camps
for such projects.
Fourth, persons with social service
backgrounds can be brought in as volunteers to act as parole and
probation officers to supplement the current force. This can be
modeled on the Japanese system, where most of the parole and
probation officers' services are provided by community volunteers.
Fifth, all public safety agencies should be
authorized to bring retired personnel back into service, part time,
with the payment of their health insurance premiums as the one form
of compensation benefit for such retirement service. This will allow
us to maintain public safety services but will also fill a gap in
health insurance coverage. It is financially beneficial to taxpayers
and retirees.
This can include additional service by Plan
B (retired) judges in exchange for health insurance coverage.
The economic challenges facing us call for
redesign and re-engineering of government to better achieve good
results -- not to retreat from carrying out the will of the voters.
Kevin Mannix is a Salem attorney and
former legislator. He was chief petitioner for Measure 61, for which
the Legislature referred the alternative Measure 57, on last
November's ballot.
