http://www.latimes.com/la-ed-oclettersa9.5mar09,1,1969313.story 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Suggestions for Reining In Prison Guard Salaries

March 9, 2003

Re "Overtime Pays Off at Prisons" (Feb. 10):

I am sickened by the whole affair of the prison guards' wage and perks packages. I begrudge no working person a decent salary and benefits, but this goes way over the line. To have no control over sick-day call-ins and then to allow them to count toward overtime is indefensible. The 34% increase in wages and its $500 million a year cost to taxpayers is criminal. The entire package is so redolent of the stink of crooked politicians and influence-buying that it is devastating to anyone with a sense of decency. I am ashamed for my beloved state.

But what else to expect from a Legislature whose members implore us to send them to Sacramento to do good work and then charge us $120 a day plus cars and gas, etc., for the electoral victory. That same group of politicians who magnanimously raise the minimum wage to the princely sum of $6.75 per hour while they pay themselves very handsome salaries on top of their "expenses."

The prison-guarding busin-ess should be privatized at once, with oversight boards composed of state employees and private citizens. We would save hundreds of millions of dollars annually as well as being able to prevent cover-ups of sadistic abuses of power on the part of guards or their supervisors.

This could be a measure for the next election, since there isn't enough moral fiber in Sacramento to even suggest such a thing.

Wallace Wood

Costa Mesa

*

Re "Rein In Guards' Overtime" (Editorial, Feb. 17):

Though there is no doubt the prison guards' overtime is out of control, The Times' prescription for correction misses the mark. Few illnesses that require one or two days off from work require a visit to the doctor. Few businesses require a doctor's note after missing work.

No, the major problem is the clause in the contract that allows the guards to get overtime pay for a day in a week in which they have taken a sick day. Who wouldn't take advantage of that? "Sick" Tuesday for a four-day holiday, then overtime pay on Friday, as Saturday was a scheduled day. Wow!

Another issue that needs to be addressed is that the state's right to monitor and discipline guards for excessive absences was eliminated. That added to the free overtime is an invitation to abuse.

The budget deficit really has nothing to do with it. Those are abusive clauses in the prison guards' contract and must be corrected as soon as possible.

Patricia A. Fyler

Brea
 

STOCKTON
Inmates, Guards Pack Bags as Women's Prison Shuts Down
By Michelle Munn
Special to The Times

March 1, 2003

STOCKTON -- Hundreds of inmates and guards packed their belongings and transferred to new assignments as a Northern California women's medium-security prison locked its doors for the last time.

Over the last couple of months, Northern California Women's Facility prison officials have moved about 450 inmates to other facilities and paroled close to 200 others. Earlier this week, the remaining 65 women took one last look at the concrete and cinder-block buildings and boarded a bus to other prisons in the state.

Meanwhile, 130 prison guards lined up by seniority and, one by one, entered the inmates' visiting room to learn their destiny. For those with more years in uniform, it meant selecting from a number of options and a plum reassignment nearby. For those with less experience, it meant forced relocation.

Because of the state's budget problems and a declining population of female inmates, the Department of Corrections followed a recommendation by the governor to close the prison. The department expects to save $1.5 million over the remaining four months of this fiscal year, and another $10.5 million in the next fiscal year from the closure.

Some guards said they believed the prison's closure was a political move.

"We were used as a sacrificial lamb," said Angelina Moore, a guard with six years of experience who transferred to the women's prison six months ago. "[Gov. Gray] Davis needed to make his cuts, so they looked around and we're the smallest place in the state.... It's horrible. Adjusting to a new prison, new inmates, that's a big deal."

But the pressure to trim prison budgets is a national trend, not a California anomaly, according to criminologists and others in the field.

"Fiscally motivated pressures on prison policy is a universal problem," said Franklin Zimring, a criminologist at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law.

In 1997, the number of female inmates in the state reached nearly 11,000. It declined to about 9,800 at the end of last year, according to the Department of Corrections.

Noting the decline in female inmates, the state's legislative analyst suggested to the Legislature in February 2001 that if it needed to save costs, it could close the Northern California Women's Facility because of its relatively high operating costs and its proximity to other prisons with space.

Closing the prison, transferring inmates to four other facilities and employee relocation costs could cost the state approximately $2.2 million, said corrections spokesman Russ Heimrich.

About 190 nonviolent offenders, or 30% of the 640 inmates, were paroled since the announcement of the prison's closure. That is similar to the parole rate of 25% to 33% at the state's other 32 prisons, Heimrich said.

The governor's budget anticipates that the women's prison will reopen in 2004-05 for male inmates, whose population is expected to rise by 2007. Any such move would require legislative approval, officials said.

The women's prison had served as an intake center for newly incarcerated male convicts; the other Northern California prisons with those centers are severely overcrowded, corrections officials said.

Moore's situation is bittersweet: She will transfer to the Sierra Conservation Center, a maximum-security prison housing men and women. Her new post is in Jamestown, 66 miles away from her Stockton home.

Prison officials said change is difficult, and that it will take some time before the guards are settled in their new assignments.

"It's typical human nature," said Deputy Warden George Mosqueda, who closed the prison's doors Friday. "We are changing somebody's life. Some will be happy with their next station, and some will not. It's a matter of getting used to it."

THE STATE
Prison Guards Union Backs Off on Talks Over Pay Concessions
Angry over closure of a women's prison, leaders also withdraw support of Davis' plan to move forward on a new death row at San Quentin.
By Gregg Jones
Times Staff Writer

March 1, 2003

SACRAMENTO -- Reacting angrily to the Davis administration's closure of a women's prison in Stockton this week, California's powerful prison guards union said Friday the move had undermined state efforts to win salary concessions from correctional officers.

The union also criticized the decision of Gov. Gray Davis to move forward with a $220-million project to build a new death row at San Quentin State Prison, calling the plan "voodoo prison economics" that would exacerbate the state budget crisis. The union previously had supported the project, which guards and prison officials say is urgently needed because of security concerns at the antiquated facility for condemned prisoners.

"They've missed an opportunity to truly reduce costs," said Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. "They've made it extremely difficult to pursue any sort of concessions. For us to come back to the table at this point, the price just got higher."

Facing a budget shortfall of $26 billion to $35 billion over the next 16 months, the Davis administration is trying to convince the prison guards and three public employee groups to accept $470 million in pay cuts and other savings.

The prison guards union had offered to begin negotiations over salary cuts, reductions in overtime pay and other cost-saving measures -- but only if the Department of Corrections shelved a plan to close the Northern California Women's Facility in Stockton.

Marty Morgenstern, the governor's chief labor negotiator, said preliminary talks with the union had been underway for weeks, but the decision to move ahead with the closure of the Stockton facility meant "the end of things, at least as they stand now. We're certainly always ready and eager to negotiate."

The prison guards union, one of California's leading contributors to political campaigns, negotiated a new contract with the Davis administration last year. The contract, approved nearly unanimously by the Legislature, will increase the pay of guards as much as 37% over the next five years, the state auditor says.

Corcoran carefully avoided direct criticism of Davis on Friday, saying, "I would be amazed if [the Corrections Department] shared this with the governor. This is bureaucracy at its finest."

Davis has been criticized for shielding the Department of Corrections from the billions of dollars in budget cuts he has recommended to the Legislature. A number of Democratic lawmakers are proposing cuts in the $5.2-billion prison budget proposed by Davis, a Democrat.

The union said it supports the construction of a new death row at San Quentin, but that the project should be postponed because of the state's economic crisis. "I absolutely agree that a new death row is needed for both officer and inmate safety," Corcoran said. "However, when we're facing a $35-billion deficit and Californians are being asked to make sacrifices, we believe it is irresponsible to be expending that type of money. The timing is indefensible."

Corrections Department spokesman Steve Green defended both the death row project and the closure of the Stockton facility. He noted that the nonpartisan legislative analyst has recommended closing the Stockton prison as a cost-savings measure because of the declining women's prison population in California.

But Corcoran said the closure of the women's prison would unnecessarily disrupt the lives of 200 staff members, including 130 correctional officers and supervisors, while not saving the state money.

But the larger implications of the dispute could be the impact on Davis administration attempts to renegotiate contracts with prison guards.

Noting that it "takes both parties" to reopen the contract, Corcoran said the union's offer of salary concessions -- in exchange for keeping the Stockton facility open -- "was basically thrown back in our face."
 

 Los Angeles Times Link

EDITORIAL
Rein In Guards' Overtime

February 17, 2003

We could slam the prison guards union for, among other demonstrations of clout, making it possible for dozens of correctional officers to earn more than state legislators. But it's hard to condemn the Correctional Peace Officers Assn. for pushing for the best deal for its members: That's what unions do.

No, the people who should get sacks of irate taxpayer letters are the state's elected officials, including Gov. Gray Davis, who either didn't read the fine print in the guards' contract before signing it or didn't have the guts to say no to one of his biggest campaign donors.

Legislators and the governor approved a contract for the state's 23,000 guards last January that, in addition to a 34% pay increase over four years, has created a spiral of sick leave and overtime. Overtime hours have risen by 25% over the last two years, costing taxpayers $200 million in time-and-a-half pay, even as California faces a $34-billion budget shortfall.

Here's why some prison guards are putting in 1,000 hours or more of overtime a year, doubling $55,000 salaries: The new contract drops a clause allowing a manager to ask the officer to produce a doctor's note. Now, no surprise, guards are calling in sick more often. That means more overtime hours for the guards willing to cover for their absent colleagues, which stresses out those guards, who then call in sick.

That's how 110 correctional officers earned more than $100,000 last year. Two guards made more than the director of the Department of Corrections and one, at $145,000, pulled in more than California's attorney general. They racked up this overtime bonanza as state prison wardens worked to curb overtime by filling long-standing vacancies with 2,100 newly hired guards.

Correctional officers bristle at suggestions they are featherbedding and defend the sick-leave rules, insisting that their jobs are perilous and demeaning.

No question, guarding murderers and rapists is lousy work. But with the ballooning state deficit triggering teacher layoffs and hospital closures, why on Earth did lawmakers agree to rules that force them to hand over wads of cash to correctional officers?

Part of the answer surely lies in the union's political generosity, the $251,000 it gave to Davis' reelection campaign and the $1 million it lavished on legislators and their causes last year. And the union isn't shy about playing its soft-on-crime card against lawmakers who dare to defy it. But defy it they must. Anything else is one more slap in taxpayers' faces.

Davis directed his chief labor negotiator last week to reopen the guards' contract, which doesn't expire until 2006. The governor's office says the guards' windfall pay raises are on the table. Good, but unless the state reins in overtime as well, California's budget pain will only multiply.

Overtime Pays Off at Prisons
Some guards make more than $100,000 a year. Sick leave provision in contract lets them cash in on extra hours, but adds to budget troubles.
By Dan Morain
Times Staff Writer

February 10 2003

SACRAMENTO -- Joe Bradley is a California state employee who earned a bigger state paycheck last year than did any member of the Legislature or most other state workers.

Bradley doesn't run an agency, oversee a college campus or control big pension investments. He is a prison guard, one of at least 110 correctional workers who made more than $100,000 last year. Two correctional officers made more than the director of the Department of Corrections. And one made upward of $145,000, more than the salary of Superior Court judges and California's attorney general.

While the top pay scale for correctional officers is $54,888, Bradley and the others managed to double that by working 1,000 hours or more in overtime.

Altogether, the state's roughly 23,000 correctional officers, sergeants and lieutenants punched in $200-million worth of overtime last year. The number of hours was more than 25% above the level of just two years ago. The level rose even though California hired 2,100 more correctional officers, specifically to bring overtime to heel by filling vacancies.

The governor and the Legislature took other actions, however, that now make soaring prison overtime an unintended contributor to the state's $34-billion budget shortfall over the next 17 months.

Much of the overtime problem, officials agree, stems from a seemingly innocuous change in prison sick leave policy.

Heading into the 2002 election, Davis and a near-unanimous Legislature ratified that change last January by approving a labor contract with the prison guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which is among the largest campaign donors in the state.

In addition to granting correctional officers a major boost in pay, the labor pact permitted officers to call in sick without a doctor's note confirming the illness. With the new policy in place, prison officers called in sick 500,000 more hours in 2002 than in 2001, a 27% increase.

"Our overtime would have been below 2001, or real close, had it not been for that 500,000-hour increase," said Wendy Still, the main budget analyst for the Department of Corrections.

Union executives attribute the heavy overtime to the roughly 1,500 vacancies among correctional officers. While many officers volunteer for overtime, supervisors often must order them to work extra shifts just to keep inmates properly in check. As officers tell it, extra overtime leads to sick time, which feeds the need for more overtime. All the work can take a toll.

While vacancies and other factors contribute to overtime, the nonpartisan Bureau of State Audits reported that the biggest single chunk last year -- 34% -- was required to compensate ffor guards who called in sick.

State officials have been well aware of the problem.

The Department of Corrections has asked for $98 million to pay for high overtime costs from 2001. While the final tally for 2002 is not complete, prison officials expect the count will exceed 2001 by about 100,000 hours.

In January, the Department of Finance requested that the Legislature give Corrections an extra $21.09 million and let officials fill 114 positions to cover "under-budgeted sick leave funding" for the current fiscal year. In the coming year, Davis estimates that sick leave will cost an additional $14.7 million and require 327 more prison workers.

For prison workers, the extra hours are lucrative. Officers are paid time and a half, averaging $37 an hour, roughly $200 a day after taxes. Like everyone else, they have bills to pay. Bradley, a 31-year veteran at the California Institute for Men at Chino, uses his overtime to pay to remodel his retirement home in Vermont.

"Some want to buy new cars," said Bradley, who is counting down the final few days toward retirement. "Some want to come up with down payments for houses. They have different things they want to buy. They want to bring better lives to their families."

Officer T.L. Laudermill, 44, put in more than 2,200 hours of overtime at Chino state prison. That's essentially a double shift or more every workday of the year.

He has good reason. His wife of 21 years cannot work because she has lupus and is on dialysis nine hours a day. And Laudermill believes he earned every penny of his $145,000-plus pay.

"People don't know what it's like behind the wall," Laudermill said. "I wake up, go to work and I'm not promised I will make it home to see my family. How many times this morning did someone curse you? How often do you have wrestle an inmate to the ground? Did anyone throw feces in your face?"

Laudermill and Bradley violate no rule by working overtime. But because the Department of Corrections relies so heavily on officers who put in extra shifts, the agency consistently has been overspending its budget of about $5 billion. In its assessment of perennial cost overruns, the Bureau of State Audits cites two repeat offenders: overtime and sick leave.

In January 2000, the auditor reported the department "failed to effectively manage sick leave use, holiday and other paid leave programs," resulting in "excessive overtime costs."

In November 2001, the auditor said the department ran up $87 million in unnecessary costs because of "excessive overtime for custody staff required to make up for numerous vacant positions and exorbitant use of sick leave."

Most recently, in July, the auditor focused on costs associated with the new labor contract. Pointing to what it called a dramatic rise in sick leave, the auditor noted that "overtime costs have likely increased to cover for the added absences."

The guards' labor contract attracted attention last year, in part because the union donated $251,000 to Davis' reelection two months after he signed legislation implementing the deal. Altogether, the union gave Davis $1.4 million in direct and indirection donations during his first term.

The union also is among the biggest donors to legislators, spending more than $1 million on their causes and campaigns last year.

The union estimates that officers' pay, which ranks fourth highest in the nation, will rise to $73,000 annually by 2006, when the contract expires. That 34% increase will cost the state $500 million a year.

But pay is only one cost embedded in the contract.

At the union's urging, Davis administration negotiators eliminated one way for supervisors to monitor sick leave and discipline officers suspected of not legitimately being sick.

Previously, managers could place officers on a list for "extraordinary use of sick leave" if they appeared to be abusing the right by, for example, claiming to be ill after having been denied a day off.

Once on the list, an employee needed to provide a note from a doctor justifying leave. An employee who continued abusing sick leave could face discipline, such as suspension. The new contract abolishes that list and says employees may not face discipline simply for calling in sick frequently.

"Our language was the most repressive of any bargaining unit in the state," said Gary Clark, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. chapter at Chino, the prison that led all others in overtime last year. "Now we can actually use the sick leave that we earn."

By contract, correctional officers are entitled to one day of paid sick leave each month. Last year, correctional officers used an average of about 13.5 days, utilizing accrued days. It's a number on the rise. On average, officers stayed home ill nine days in 1999.

A Department of Corrections spokesman, Russ Heimerich, said he doubts sick leave is being abused. But he noted that prison supervisors "had a management tool taken away" when Davis and the Legislature approved the labor contract.

"It is what it is," Heimerich said. "That decision was made in the bargaining process to take that out of the equation, and we're just going to have to deal with it."

The Times reported last June that sick leave spiked upward in the four months after Davis signed legislation implementing the labor contract. At the time, the governor directed that his chief labor negotiator, Marty Morgenstern, "immediately review the situation and take all actions to make sure the system is not abused."

Despite that pronouncement, sick leave continued rising in 2002. "At this point," Morgenstern said last week, "we haven't found particular abuses."

This year, in trying to close the overall budget gap, Davis directed him to reopen contracts with unions for prison guards and three public employee groups. Morgenstern's goal is to cut $470 million in costs.

In an interview, Morgenstern said he will home in on officers' pay, not on sick leave provisions. And he defended his decision to eliminate the sick leave list.

The elimination of sick leave discipline is not the only reason for the run-up in sick leave. In its reports, the state auditor has noted that the Davis administration agreed in 1999 to let guards count sick days toward overtime.

As a result, an officer can work eight-hour shifts Monday through Thursday, call in sick on Friday, then fill in for someone on Saturday and collect a day's overtime pay. That change took effect in 2000. In 2001, overtime shot up by a million hours to 5.1 million hours at an overall cost of $200 million.Additionally, the new contract for the first time granted permanent intermittent employees -- officers who have not yet been hired full time -- the right to use sick leave. Now a supervisor seeking to fill a vacant post may phone an intermittent employee. If the employee claims to be ill, he or she would receive eight hours of sick pay. Other employees contacted by phone also could claim to be ill. As a result, the auditor has noted, the department could have to pay for sick leave "for several employees to cover one absence."

Another more long-standing provision requires that the Department of Corrections grant overtime on the basis of seniority. That means the highest paid officers have first claim on any overtime. If all officers including rookies could bid on overtime, the state could save $4.8 million a year, the auditor said.

In 2002, the state graduated 2,117 new officers from its training academy, twice the number of 2001 graduates and the most since the mid-1990s when the prison population was soaring.

"We are filling more posted positions with people, and we are seeing our vacancy rate go down," Heimerich said. "That part is good. We're optimistic that, as we continue doing that, we will see fewer overtime hours worked. Sick leave is more of a conundrum."

Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) is the one legislator who voted against the guards' contract. In his view, the new sick leave provisions worsen what already was a "racket" among officers: " 'I'll get sick today and you cover for me; you get sick tomorrow, and I'll cover for you.' "

But there is a broader issue, as McClintock sees it, and it helps explain California's huge budget gap. Prison costs are rising, even as the prison population, while up slightly, remains below 1990 levels, he noted. "That's one of the departments that is causing the outrageously high levels of expenditures," he said. "Clearly, the state's expenditures cannot be sustained by the state's economy." 
 

Report: California guards earned millions in overtime 

Monday, February 10, 2003 
©2003 Associated Press 

URL:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/02/10/state0629EST0020.DTL
 

(02-10) 03:29 PST LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 

In the midst of a budget crisis, California prison guards clocked $200 million worth of overtime last year, much of it as a result of calling in sick more often, it was reported Monday. 

The state's 23,000 correctional workers worked 25 percent more overtime hours in 2002 than they did just two years earlier, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

At least 100 officers, lieutenants and sergeants made more than $100,000 each and one earned $145,000 -- more than the salary of the state attorney general. 

The top pay for a corrections worker is $54,888 but some guards nearly doubled their pay by working 1,000 hours or more of overtime. 

One reason, officials said, was a contract reached last year with the prison guards' union that relaxed sick leave rules. 

Corrections officers called in sick 27 percent more often last year than they did in 2001, for an additional 500,000 lost hours. More than a third of the overtime logged last year was to compensate for guards who called in sick, according to the Bureau of State Audits. 

"Our overtime would have been below 2001, or real close, had it not been for that 500,000-hour increase," said Wendy Still, main budget analyst for the Department of Corrections. 

The contract with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association attracted attention because the union is one of the state's top political campaign donors. It made well over $1 million in political donations last year, including $251,000 to Gov. Gray Davis' re-election campaign two months after he signed legislation implementing the labor contract. 

But the union says the sick leave change was warranted. 

"Our language was the most repressive of any bargaining unit in the state," union President Gary Clark said. "Now we can actually use the sick leave that we earn." 

Officer T.L. Laudermill, 44, believes he earned the $145,000 he made by working more than 2,200 hours of overtime at the California Institute for Men at Chino. 

"People don't know what it's like behind the wall," Laudermill said. "I wake up, go to work and I'm not promised I will make it home to see my family. How many times this morning did someone curse you? How often do you have to wrestle an inmate to the ground? Did anyone throw feces in your face?" 

Last year the governor's chief labor negotiator, Marty Morgenstern, was told to review the system to see if there were abuses after sick leave use rose. 

"At this point we haven't found particular abuses," Morgenstern told the Times last week.

This year, Morgenstern has been told to reopen contracts with the prison guards union and other employee groups in an attempt to cut $470 million in costs but he said he will focus on salaries rather than on sick leave provisions. 

Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Heimerich said he doubts sick leave is being abused. However, prison supervisors lost a "management tool" with the contract, he said, "and we're just going to have to deal with it." 

©2003 Associated Press 

 http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/5471312p-6455248c.html

Guards' union hosts legislators in Hawaii
 

By Kevin Yamamura -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Thursday, December 5, 2002

Days before California begins tackling its multibillion-dollar budget deficit, three of the state Legislature's four leaders are spending this week in Hawaii with the powerful prison correctional officers union.The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which gives millions of dollars to legislators each year, expects as many as 20 lawmakers to attend the three-day session at the Sheraton Maui that began Wednesday night.

The trip comes as hundreds of groups -- including the prison correctional officers -- hope to stave off cuts to their programs in what promises to be a painful budget year.

Included among the attendees are three leaders who will be instrumental in negotiating this year's budget -- Assembly Republican leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks, Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Culver City, and Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga.

The leaders plan to return to Sacramento by Monday, when a special legislative session on the budget is scheduled to begin.

All three are paying for their airfare and hotel themselves, most likely out of their campaign funds, according to their aides. Under state law, elected officials can use campaign money for far-flung trips as long as they are "reasonably related" to a governmental purpose, said Jim Knox, executive director of the public interest group California Common Cause.

The event involves morning discussions about the November elections and state politics, but lawmakers are "on their own" for the rest of the day, said Don Novey, past president of CCPOA, already in Maui to help organize the conference.

During the 2001-02 campaign finance cycle, CCPOA donated $15,000 to Wesson, $6,000 to Brulte and $2,000 to Cox. The group led all special interests in contributions for six years from 1995 to 2000, according to a Common Cause report released in March.

CCPOA, which represents 29,000 state-employed correctional officers, is known for giving heavily to both political parties. It has long been an advocate of more prisons to ease inmate overcrowding.

Earlier this year, CCPOA received a 37 percent raise over five years for its members in a contract approved by the Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. State employee groups are expected to seek to protect their contracts in the coming year as budget-cutting pressure builds.

"Past history demonstrates that CCPOA has fared quite well relative to other state employees, and we certainly believe their influence is in large part attributable to their status as the biggest campaign donors in California," Knox said. "And this is another example of their strategy to gain influence."

The trip, said Knox, is "an example of how wealthy special-interest groups can gain access to legislators that is not available to ordinary citizens or public-interest groups."

"They don't do these in Bakersfield," he said.

A spokesman for Cox said the Maui event affords the correctional officers group no greater access than any other organization.

"Mr. Cox has discussions with all his constituencies, and this is something where he was invited to appear on a panel with Republicans and Democrats alike," said Peter DeMarco, Cox's spokesman. "So we don't believe this is a situation where somebody has more access than somebody else."

The prison correctional officers group "was deciding where to hold it, and they chose the location," DeMarco added. "If they had held it in Sacramento, he'd have gone to Sacramento."

Novey didn't deny that Hawaii's 80-degree temperatures made it easier to attract state lawmakers for the week, even if he isn't paying for their hotel or airfare.

"It's a more free-spirited setting for dialogue," Novey said.

That setting is "where the cobalt Pacific washes onto Kaanapali Beach" and includes a 142-yard freshwater swimming lagoon, according to the Sheraton Maui Web site.

"I wish I could get more of them here before they start beating each other over the head," Novey said. "It's good to see them talk to each other, in more of a convivial setting, especially going into the next session."

He explained that West Coast lawmakers for the past 28 years have flown to Hawaii each December for a meeting known as the Pacific Rim Conference. The annual weeklong event, sponsored by CCPOA and corporations such as Pfizer and Boeing, takes place this year from Dec. 8-14, in the middle of the California Legislature's special budget session.

Lawmakers will foot the bill for their trips this year, Novey said, but that has not always been the case.

According to a public filing, Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Fremont, attended the Pacific Rim Conference in 2000 and declared it as a $1,267 gift from the conference organizers. State law allows nonprofit groups to donate to elected officials trips that are associated with a speech. Figueroa also flew to Hawaii on Wednesday for this year's event.

Novey said CCPOA originally organized this week's conference as a "good preamble to Pacific Rim," before Davis called the budget session for next week. Some lawmakers were planning to stay in Hawaii for two weeks, but they will cut their trip short to return for the special session.

"This is a commitment (Wesson) made a long time ago, and now it just happens to fall at this time," said Patricia Soto, Wesson's spokeswoman. "He will come back on time. While he is there, Mr. Cox and Mr. Brulte will be meeting with him to discuss items on the budget."

The one legislative leader who decided not to attend was Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco. Burton said he didn't go "because I didn't feel like going to Hawaii."

While several legislative staff members knew about the CCPOA trip, they would not confirm exactly who will attend. Novey said he didn't know, either, but anticipates between 10 and 20 members. "Whoever shows up," he saiid

The Bee's Kevin Yamamura can be reached at (916) 326-5542 or  [email protected]

This California Lawyer Article ought to be very inspiring for your letters to the editors regarding the above article.  We are very grateful to the BEE for exposing this OUTRAGEOUS situation!

 http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=466

Control issues: State prison guards' union worst in the nation--and getting richer 
by Jill Stewart 

In the soap opera that is statehouse politics, the role of leering villain is played by one unusually nasty organization that has struck all but a few legislators dumb with fear and is now brashly demonstrating that it controls Gov. Gray Davis. 

I speak, of course, of the state prison guards’ union, a deeply incompetent body of workers who cannot keep the Mexican Mafia and hard drugs from coursing through state prisons but are being heaped with raises and highly inappropriate workplace concessions by Davis and the Legislature. 

California prison guards are by far the most powerful—and the most bizarre—prison guard union in the nation. They are a freak of history and circumstance, 20,000-plus lightly trained men and women who require only a GED (union member lieutenants and captains require more education) yet have risen to control the outcome of many legislative races and convinced Gov. Perfect Hair that his political fortunes rest with them. 

Using an updated form of Boss Tweed-style political intimidation, the guards’ union is so feared that few Republicans or Democrats are willing to seriously challenge them. This explains their bloated salaries—they will soon make more than California university professors—their padded staffing and needlessly soaring overtime as California faces down a $28 billion budget deficit. 

Although one nervous lobbyist (they are all nervous when speaking of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association) told me the union “loves to manipulate statistics on prisoner recidivism in California, making California look like the third- or fourth-worst in the U.S. The fact is we are the worst. More of our ex-cons go back to prison than in any other state.” 

Actually, it’s the Department of Corrections that obscures the facts—the union merely capitalizes on it. According to the private Criminal Justice Institute, California tracks its prisoners for only two years while almost all other states track prisoners for three to five years, some much longer. 

Prison officials stop tracking the parolees after two years in order to make California’s ex-cons look as if they’re not returning to prison. One California corrections expert, afraid to give his name, explains the Criminal Justice Institute report: “Even with only two years of tracking, 58 percent of California parolees are back in prison while most states with three to five years of tracking have 10 to 20 percent of parolees back in prison. Nobody’s a disaster like California.” 

And why is this so? 

Largely because we have the most troubling prison guard organization in the nation, throwbacks who use methods of prisoner control and punishment so backward that a Del Norte County Superior Court judge found it unconstitutional. 

In December, Judge Robert Weir said California guards must stop locking down segregated cell blocks of prisoners after small groups of Latinos or blacks get into a fight in the prison yard or in the laundry room. 

As lawyers for Pelican Bay State prisoners showed, “the guards were using the mass lockdowns which last weeks or months to repress” well-behaved and even model prisoners, even in far-off sectors of the prison. The guards were out to make the prisoners stir-crazy—their special little reminder that it’s still another era inside California’s prisons. 

So you don’t give a flying fig about how we treat prisoners? Fine. But don’t believe for a moment that we law-abiding citizens outside have escaped the suffering caused by the actions of our fossilized, idiotic California prison guards. 

The thousands of parolees released onto streets in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose every year commit crimes upon the rest of us at a rate higher than ex-cons almost anywhere. That’s a big reason why California has the worst prisoner recidivism in the nation. 

You can thank the prison guards’ union, because unlike weaker prison guard unions in most states, our all-powerful union has fought most prison reforms that could have given these felons and drug addicts the training and tools to get a fresh start on the outside. 

Geoff Segal, a policy director at the Reason Public Policy Institute, who has consulted with officials in five states on budget problems and prison issues, says, “They are the strongest guard union in the country by far, and one that has no shame in that what they do is solely for themselves regardless of cost to society or others. The Bureau of State Audits says Corrections is the worst department in California—the worst run, with the sweetest contracts, their job requirements are the softest and their abuse of rules and overtime is the grossest.” 

But in Sacramento, one is not permitted to openly criticize the guards. 

Oh, heavens no. 

The most tragic example of this is former state Sen. Richard Polanco. The guards are “credited”—if that upbeat word can be used—with bringing down Polanco, who, while controversial, was also the most heroic critic against them. 

Polanco vociferously fought the guards’ efforts to keep their incompetent clutches on every prison program and fought Davis’ huge raises for the guards. Polanco understood that private correctional programs bring to California far more competent and cheaper groups who can provide prisoners with skills for the real world—the worst possible news for knuckle-dragging guards whose greatest fear is a reduction in the California prison population. 

Former Sen. Polanco once told me the guards “are bad business, in every sense of that word, and people don’t realize the danger we have created by letting them run Sacramento.” These days, Polanco cannot be reached for comment. 

Polanco was driven from politics after the media in 2001 received anonymous mailings of a birth certificate proving Polanco had a “love child” with a former staffer. The mailing went out just as Polanco launched his campaign for Los Angeles City Council, but was never linked to any source. At the very same time, reports surfaced that Polanco settled a sexual harassment lawsuit with another staffer from an alleged 1996 incident. The two pieces of news caused Polanco to abandon his City Council race. 

Neither piece of news was traced to the guard union. However, in May 2002 the Los Angeles Times openly called Polanco, “the target of a campaign by the [prison guard] union last year to deny him a seat on the Los Angeles City Council.” 

Republicans also quake in fear of the guards. In an “object lesson,” the guards’ union poured $260,000 into a race for conservative high desert candidate Sharon Runner to oust equally conservative longtime pol Phil Wyman, who supported private prison programs. 

Says my nervous lobbyist acquaintance, “The message to Republicans from the guards was, ‘We will spend whatever amount of money is necessary against those who disagree with us, and we are in control.’” 

Both sides quietly submit to the prison guards. Republican Assembly minority leader Dave Cox and Republican Senate minority leader Jim Brulte went to Hawaii with the prison guard union in December, right after the budget disaster’s scope was announced by Gray Davis, as did Democratic Speaker of the Assembly Herb Wesson. 

Purportedly there to attend the prison guard union’s conference on political issues and leadership, the widely criticized Hawaiian junket was really a psychological display of pure fear. 

“Fear is my analysis,” says Reason Foundation’s Segal. “They were literally afraid not to show up in Hawaii.” 

Of the leadership, only Senate President John Burton had the guts to turn down the prison guards’ invite to Hawaii, but Burton buckled to the union some days ago, reappointing retired prison guard union leader Don Novey to a cushy $100,000-a-year post on a state commission. 

And look how Gray Davis displays his fear. He proposes cutting the funding for rubber sheets for the elderly who pee in their beds, and ending state funding for diabetic testing kits for the low-income, yet he’s trying to sneak in $50 million in extra money for the Department of Corrections. 

This, even though our prison population has tapered off due to the drop in crime and voter-approved drug treatment diversion programs. For shame, Gov. Davis. 

Last year, amidst the budget crisis, Davis and the Legislature ignored Polanco and gave the guards an outrageous, utterly unearned 34 percent, five-year raise with extra vacation, shorter hours and retirement at 50 with nearly full pay. (Some weeks later, the guards handed Davis the biggest check he has ever received from a campaign contributor, for $251,000.) 

Sickening, isn’t it? 

Only California pays uneducated guards $55,000 and lavishes overtime on 5,000 guards who make more than their bosses’ $60,000 to $70,000 salaries. Last year, an audit found 80 prison guards stuck taxpayers for more than $100,000. 

“It would make you sick to see the $50,000 cars pealing out of San Quentin Prison after the shift change,” says my lobbyist source. 

The vast majority of states pay lower salaries than California, in keeping with the low skill levels of prison guards everywhere. Yet guards elsewhere have been forced to help prepare prisoners for the outside world. Not in California, where a despicable movement is underway to reclassify non-troublesome, low- and medium-security prisoners as problem prisoners needing hgh-security cells, all to justify more prison guard overtime and the opening of the redundant, costly Delano II maximum-security prison. 

As we watch Davis and the Legislature cower before the prison guards amidst this round of budget slashes, I predict that in a few years we are likely to have a huge, system-wide guard scandal on our hands. 

Because that’s what happens when one group is allowed to pervert the roots of the democratic process and nobody is watching them. 

Write to [email protected] 

 © 1994 - 2002 Southland Publishing, All Rights Reserved
 

November 01, 2002

Strong Arm of the Law
A small union of California prison guards wields enormous political power 
By Pamela A. Maclean
 

In June 1998 a campaign broadside hit the doorsteps of hundreds of voters in rural Kings County that called for the ouster of incumbent District Attorney Greg Strickland. The flyers implied that if the inmates at the county's Corcoran State Prison could vote, they would reelect Strickland. The full-color attack piece, circulated days before the election, was sponsored by the 29,000-member California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the state's prison guard union.

The union had given Strickland's opponent nearly $30,000-a huge sum in a county with just 136,000 residents. The nearly 17,600 inmates at Corcoran's two facilities and nearby Avenal State Prison can't vote, but the 4,173 prison employees do. Strickland was defeated, and he says in retrospect that his opponent's mailer was "devastating." Now a Fresno County deputy district attorney, he says that he "truly wants to forget the past" and refuses to discuss the Kings County election.

Strickland, one of two DAs targeted by the CCPOA in 1998, had earned the union's wrath by investigating allegations of officer misconduct at Corcoran. In 1995 he had prosecuted officers involved in the so-called Calipatria bus incident, in which some 30 guards greeted 36 inmates by allegedly choking, punching, and beating the shackled men when they got off the bus from Calipatria State Prison. Strickland was also assisting state and federal investigators looking into charges that officers had set up a prisoner for rape by an inmate known as the Booty Bandit. That case was frustrated, Strickland told a state Senate hearing on Corcoran in July 1998, because "of all the correctional officers refusing to talk." He concluded by claiming that the union had "become a political action committee."

Indeed, California's prison guard union is a strange political animal. Founded in 1957, it has grown from an old boy's club to the state's largest campaign contributor in 2001-beating out the California Teachers Association and Philip Morris Cos. According to a March 2002 analysis by California Common Cause, the union is the largest financial backer of Gov. Gray Davis, the biggest contributor to state Senate speaker John Burton (D-San Francisco) in the 1999-2000 election cycle, and the largest contributor to 23 other state lawmakers. The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice claims the union pours 34 percent of its $20 million in annual dues into four political action committees (PACs), and two other affiliated PACs (the union says it spends 10 percent). The union bankrolls a crime victims' group in Sacramento, and it has joined forces with three of the state's largest Indian gaming tribes to create the Native Americans & Peace Officers Independent Expenditure Committee, located at CCPOA's union headquarters in West Sacramento.

The CCPOA enjoys a unique advantage in local elections: Because many of the state's 33 prisons are located in rural counties, union money and organization has an impact far greater than its membership would indicate. Prior to the March 2002 primaries, for instance, the union donated from $2,500 to $15,000 to candidates in six district attorney contests. Some $15,000 went to the DA of Lassen County-home to High Desert State Prison-and $40,000 went to fend off the June 2001 proposed recall of the DA in Marin County, where San Quentin is located. "Today's DA is tomorrow's state senator," says Lance Corcoran, CCPOA's executive vice president. "We get our name out there."

The union has also donated thousands of dollars to elect judges in Lassen County, Fresno County (Pleasant Valley State Prison), and Madera County (Central California Women's Facility). As of September the CCPOA has also reported contributions to 25 local candidates for district attorney, sheriff, judge, city council, and county supervisor for the November 2002 elections. If the chapters ask for money for an election, Corcoran says, "We try to accommodate everybody."

By July the CCPOA's Local PAC had spent $111,000, with another $118,000 at its disposal. The union even supplies its own candidates in some elections, supporting the candidacy of chapter president Kelly Breshears in 2001 for city council in Blythe (located between Ironwood State Prison and Chuckawalla Valley State Prison) and correctional officer Gary Grimm-a former Blythe councilmember-for the local school board. Breshears lost; Grimm won.

The new strategy is largely the work of Don Novey, the union's longtime president. Novey, a second-generation prison guard, walked the line at Folsom State Prison for nine years before being elected union president in 1980. During his 22 years in office, Novey transformed the CCPOA into an intimidating political force. "Their presence in state politics is so pervasive that everyone accepts that that's the way it is," says an aide to one state senator. "If you screw them, they make life miserable."

In late July, Novey announced his retirement, saying it's time for fishing, golf, and grandchildren. But union vice president Corcoran says Novey is expected to remain active in the union's PACs. "He's going to keep his hand in the business," Corcoran says. (Novey did not respond to interview requests or to written questions.)

In its rapid rise to power, the CCPOA has advanced its interests and protected its gains with a militant stance toward critics inside as well as outside the prison bureaucracy. Few state or local politicians are willing to oppose its wishes. As a result, the CCPOA is capable of setting the agenda on a range of public-safety issues, influencing district attorney and judicial campaigns, calling the shots when new prison wardens are selected, and frustrating efforts at prison reform. Not since Jimmy Hoffa's rule of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has a trade union so effectively used money, brains, and political muscle to wield power.

The CCPOA's influence grew alongside California's phenomenal prison construction boom. From 1985 to 1995 the number of state prisons increased from 13 to 31 and currently house 160,000 inmates in the largest state system in the country. As the number of prisons increased, so did the California Department of Corrections' (CDC) annual operating budget-from $923 million in fiscal year 1985 to $3.4 billion in 1995. Today it is $4.8 billion. From 1985 to 1995 the number of prison guards increased from 7,570 to approximately 25,000. Wages, benefits, and working conditions for officers improved remarkably: In 1980 the average annual salary was $14,400; by 1996 it had grown to $44,000; today it is $54,000.

In the early 1990s Novey made a series of tactical decisions that reinvented the union. His first move, in 1991, was to establish a coalition with the families of crime victims. CCPOA money helped create two groups: the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau, a legislative watchdog group originally led by the mother of Manson family murder victim Sharon Tate; and Crime Victims United of California, a campaign financing arm led by the parents of murder victim Catina Rose Salarno. "Don Novey was the godfather of the victims' rights movement," says Michael Salarno, Catina's father. "Without his financial and emotional support, we could never have done this."

"We are a natural fit with victims' rights groups," says Lance Corcoran. "Crime victims were forgotten for many years, and we feel we're a forgotten entity. There are eight assaults [on correctional officers] a day in prison. We are victims too."

By 1993 the union was turning to other issues as well. It helped spearhead a successful campaign for longer prison terms for some convicted felons. According to news reports, it contributed $101,000 to put Prop. 184, the three-strikes initiative, on the November 1994 ballot. That measure passed by more than 70 percent of the vote and fed the boom in prison construction by lengthening inmate sentences. But Corcoran disputes the notion that his union is motivated only by self-interest. "We diversify," he says. "We support Special Olympics and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. The CCPOA is moving to [crime] prevention."

The increased prison population, however, contributed to conditions at some facilities that led to increasing claims of inmate abuse. In 1994 the Legislature concluded that the CDC bureaucracy itself required independent oversight. It created an Office of the Inspector General to investigate and audit operations at the state's youth and adult prisons.

For some inmates, the reform came too late. Following several years of class action litigation, U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson of San Francisco declared in January 1995 that Pelican Bay State Prison was the site of "a pattern of needless and officially sanctioned brutality" against inmates. Madrid v Gomez (ND Cal) 889 F Supp 1146, 1255. Lawyers brought to light a statewide policy that allowed officers to use lethal force to break up fights between inmates. According to testimony in Madrid, from 1989 to 1994 officers in California's state prisons shot and killed more than 30 inmates. By contrast, in all other state and federal prisons nationally only 6 inmates were killed in the same period-and 5 of those were shot while attempting to escape. Henderson appointed a special master to help develop and implement a remedial plan that addresses constitutional violations at the facility.

The Madrid ruling prompted the CDC to issue emergency regulations prohibiting guards from using firearms to break up fistfights. It also encouraged the district attorney in Del Norte County to pursue prosecutions of Pelican Bay officers. (See sidebar, "Payback at Pelican Bay," p. 28.) Meanwhile, hundreds of miles south, state and federal investigations were under way at Corcoran State Prison, another maximum- security facility where inmate fights had been broken up with lethal force.

The union responded with a new offensive. In March 1996 it formed a PAC dedicated to local electoral campaigns. The fund was created "so that chapters could get involved in the process," according to Corcoran. "DAs were not prosecuting inmate crimes [against officers]," he says. "If you turn a blind eye, at some point it gives the green light to inmates to assault us."

The investigations at Corcoran State Prison eventually led to the federal indictment of eight officers for allegedly staging "blood sport" fights between inmates that occurred in the security housing unit in 1994. Before the trial, the CCPOA financed an infomercial in 1999 about the tough working conditions at Corcoran. Thomas E. Quinn, a private investigator in Fresno who produced a documentary video showing some of the fights, says the union's infomercial showed "prison guards as neighbors, and prisoners as the scum of the earth." Broadcast by local television stations prior to jury selection, the ad concluded with the tag line "Corcoran officers: They walk the toughest beat in the state."

Although prosecutors expressed concern about the ads to the trial judge, they didn't attempt to stop the broad-casts. The jury eventually acquitted the eight guards of all charges. Immediately after the verdict, some jurors joined the defendants for an impromptu celebration.

Despite the success of Local PAC, the CCPOA's main focus is still on Sacramento. The union became a kingmaker in the 1998 governor's race when it threw its support to Democratic candidate Gray Davis rather than to his Republican opponent, former Attorney General Dan Lungren. It pumped $2.3 million into Davis's campaign, placed television spots for Davis in the conservative Central Valley, and helped fund a bank of telephone callers before the election. With his election Davis became an ardent supporter of the union.

Since taking office Davis has received $712,000 directly from the union and another $356,000 generated at golf fund-raisers sponsored by the CCPOA. In January 2002 Davis signed a five-year labor agreement with the union that could increase annual salaries to $73,000 and, according to the CDC, cost the state $300 million a year by mid-2005. In March the union gave Davis's reelection campaign $251,000. The governor's proposed budget, released shortly afterward, fulfilled a 1998 campaign promise to the union by ending California's experiment with private prisons-typically low-wage, nonunion operations anathema to the CCPOA. Davis's budget proposal included plans to close five of the nine private prisons in California and phase out the rest as their operating contracts expire. CCPOA has showered nearly $800,000 on Davis for his current campaign. "You've got to admire Novey," concludes a Fresno-based criminal law attorney who asked not to be identified. "The same way you'd admire Boss Tweed."

By the late 1990s the CCPOA had become an established power broker, confident enough to publish an enemies list on a poster that proclaimed, "Felons Aren't the Only Bad Guys You're Up Against." On the list were state Senators Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose), both critics of alleged officer brutality and mismanagement at Corcoran and other prisons. Polanco has also supported the construction of private prisons in the state.

"The CCPOA wields way too much power," says Polanco, chairman of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations. "I think they engage in setting what [state corrections] policy is going to be. They made examples of DAs in Kings County and Del Norte County, and they took out a DA who was willing to implement justice."

Polanco's Del Norte County reference is to former District Attorney William Cornell, who resigned after the CCPOA opposed him in a 1998 reelection campaign that Cornell had won. Today, Cornell says the union's involvement in DA and judicial races can lead to conflicts of interest if guards are ever called as witnesses or become targets of an investigation. "The CCPOA donating to election campaigns of judges is ripe for conflict, to the extent that it should be barred," Cornell says. Union vice president Corcoran responds, "We have no problem providing financial support to DAs or judges. I don't think that clouds their judgment."

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer was also featured on the CCPOA enemies list. In February 1999 Lockyer endorsed legislation to create a special unit for prison investigations within his office, effectively reversing measures passed in the 1980s that restricted the authority of DAs to transfer prosecution of crimes committed in prisons to the state attorney general (Pen C §4703). But the provision for transferring prosecutions to the state AG was struck from the bill, SB 451. "The CCPOA torpedoed this thing," Lockyer told the Los Angeles Times in August 2000. Eventually Lockyer managed to establish a system in which complaints against officers not acted on by district attorneys are referred to his office. But local DAs still have the main responsibility for prosecuting crimes at prison facilities.

According to the anonymous criminal law attorney in Fresno, the CCPOA spends far more time urging DAs to prosecute assaults by inmates than defending allegations against officers. This lawyer claims the union pressures DAs to bring felony charges against inmates "for every nickel-and-dime dispute"-which permits officers to threaten a third-strike conviction as a tool for controlling behavior. "Scuffles where nobody gets hurt-things that should be handled administratively-the union wants them pressed as a felony," the lawyer says. "You read between the lines, and you see the guard pushed the guy [the inmate] to act."

Corcoran responds, "We have a clause in the contract that requires every staff assault to be reported to the district attorney." He adds, "Every institution has individually negotiated criteria on what constitutes an assault. Just because we put on a badge does not mean [staff assaults] should not be prosecuted." 

A good part of the CCPOA's extraordinary success is a consequence of its staunch support from management-the CDC and prison administrators. "The bottom line is that thousands of men and women are in prison against their will-and that takes force," says Claude "Butch" Finn, warden at Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy. "It takes correctional officers, and every prison warden appreciates it. We have a good working relationship because it is a partnership with officers on the line."

That partnership gives the union the ability, at least, to affect the selection of prison wardens. "It doesn't surprise me [if] they can block appointments," Polanco says. "More and more you are seeing wardens who want the job employing whatever strategy they need."

Corcoran responds, "I wish to God we had veto power. It is very hard to take out a warden." He scoffs at the suggestion that the union screens out candidates for warden that it doesn't like. "We don't have that kind of communication with the governor," Corcoran says. "It's not like we've got the Batphone in his office."

For all the CCPOA's abilities on offense, it also plays very good defense. Would-be investigators of officer misconduct quickly encounter the union's full-time staff of 23 attorneys-assisted by 15 paralegals, clerks, and secretaries. "Just because we are in corrections, people think the Constitution doesn't apply to us," Corcoran says. "Convicts get counsel, and so do we."

Corcoran says it's important for union members to be represented by counsel because prison guards, according to the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights (Govt C §§3300 et seq.), can be forced to testify during administrative inquiries under a very limited grant of immunity. "If someone is truly guilty of something bad, they are going to resign or lie," Corcoran says.

With counsel or union stewards sitting in, the CCPOA learns who is targeted by investigators, what questions are asked, and most important, what answers are provided. Under such circumstances, whistle-blowing against a fellow officer is imprudent at best. Three guards who testified in the Corcoran State Prison case, for instance, found themselves without careers, and one, in addition, faced disciplinary action.

Union members are protected by counsel in CDC disciplinary matters. Part of the problem, according to critics of the discipline system, is a lack of will on the part of the bureaucracy. For instance, Inspector General Stephen W. White, a former Sacramento County district attorney, issued a scathing report in March 2002 that found the CDC had blown the one-year statute of limitations for disciplinary action in more than 40 percent of the cases sampled. Although White promised to keep pushing the CDC to make improvements, his office has no authority to order changes.

Even if the CDC were more thorough in its investigation of officer misconduct, it would have to overcome the membership's last line of defense-a widely accepted code of silence. In the Madrid case, Judge Henderson referred to the "undeniable presence of a 'code of silence' ... designed to encourage prison employees to remain silent regarding the improper behavior of their fellow employees, particularly where excessive force has been alleged." 889 F Supp at 1157. Novey, asked in the 1998 state Senate hearings if he would say such a code existed, replied, "I wouldn't totally say that.... But I will attest that there are pockets [of the code], and our job's to help weed out those pockets."

A correctional officer currently working in a state prison says the brotherhood among guards is so strong because they depend on each other in life-and-death situations. "If the word gets out that you will rat out a coworker-whether it's true or not-you're simply not trusted," he says. "It doesn't matter where you go in the system. How long can you stand people [other guards] spitting on the ground every time you walk by?"

Novey's retirement this year comes at a time when the CCPOA seems particularly bulletproof. The union's chief irritants in the Legislature-Senators Polanco and Vasconcellos-will be termed out of office in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Federal prosecutors have ended their investigations at Pelican Bay after securing just three convictions, one of which was reversed and is awaiting retrial. The U.S. Attorney's office came up empty at Corcoran. That leaves oversight of the state's 33 prisons to the CDC, the Pelican Bay special master, Inspector General White, and, to a limited extent, the attorney general.

Ironically, the most successful prosecutions of officer misconduct have occurred in civil actions brought by other officers. In June 1999 whistle-blower Richard Caruso, a Corcoran officer, won a $1.7 million settlement for stress and alleged forced retirement after he came forward about other Corcoran officers. Caruso v State (ED Cal) Civ No. CV96-2023. In December 2001 San Francisco attorney John H. Scott sued the state for negligence on behalf of Curtis Landa, a former officer at Ironwood State Prison. Landa v Cal. Dep't of Corrections, (Sacramento County Sup Ct) Civ No. 01AS07629. Landa broke the code of silence by reporting a September 2000 hazing incident during which Sargeant Jesse Lara and another officer allegedly bound Landa in tape, wrote "Lara's bitch" on his arm and forehead, and poured two buckets of water on him. Two other officers are accused of blocking Landa's escape and taking photos of him. After Landa reported the incident, he was stabbed in the back and chest and left for dead by two men in black uniform pants worn in the style of the prison's elite cell-extraction team. Since filing the suit, Landa has moved his family from the area and taken a desk job.

"We have represented a few of the folks allegedly involved [in the hazing incident]," Corcoran says. "We are in a position where we don't have the luxury of judgment-we provide representation."

Some of the civil suits allege discrimination against the newest members of the union, women correctional officers. Sacramento attorneys Robin Perkins and Christopher Wohl have won more than $1.1 million in three sexual harassment suits brought by female guards against their male counterparts at High Desert State Prison and California Correctional Center. The latest settlement, reached in August on behalf of Officer Terri Sanchez for $400,000, came after U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb ordered Governor Davis to appear in court or authorize a representative to settle the case. Sanchez v Cal. Dep't of Corrections (ED Cal) Civ No. 00-CV-1232. Corcoran says the union has an extensive training program to prevent sexual harassment of officers on the job. If a charge is sustained against a union member, he says, "it could bring censure or removal from office." But attorney Wohl says that since the latest settlement, the phones have been ringing with calls from female correctional officers with stories to tell. 
 
 

Pamela A. MacLean is a reporter for the San Francisco Daily Journal.

Legislators' conference in Hawaii questioned 
Prison guards host event amid budget crisis 
Lynda Gledhill, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Friday, December 6, 2002 
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle. 

URL:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/06/MN203712.DTL
 
 

Sacramento -- When Gov. Gray Davis unveils $10 billion in proposed budget cuts today, 

three top legislative leaders will be in Hawaii attending a conference hosted by the powerful state prison guards union. 

The lawmakers plan to return from the three-day event on Maui before Monday's special session called by Davis to deal with a budget shortfall of more than $21 billion over the next year and a half. 

Staffers for Republican leaders Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga and Dave Cox of Fair Oaks, along with Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles, said the lawmakers paid for airline tickets and hotels out of personal or campaign accounts. 

Spending campaign contributions for that purpose is legal as long as there is some relation to government activities, but the trip was questioned by some groups that have been staking out their positions in the budget scramble. 

"It makes me question their commitment, or whether they're going to be objective. It doesn't convey a very good message at all," said Allan Shore, executive director of the California Coalition for Youth, which is working to give young people a voice in the budget process. 

Shore noted that the special session was called hastily before Thanksgiving, 

giving interest groups little time to prepare. The lawmakers' Hawaii trip, he said, only adds to the perception that budget deals will get worked out behind closed doors. 

Officials representing schools, local law enforcement, cities, counties and even mosquito abatement districts held press conferences across the state Thursday to urge the governor and lawmakers to spare them from drastic cuts. Parks, libraries, school counselors and teachers' aides might be the first casualties, they warned, and deep cuts could mean fewer police officers and firefighters. 

Davis said last month he would recommend $5 billion in current budget-year cuts, but a spokesman said Thursday that today's list of reductions would be about twice the original amount. 

The adjustments are needed because the budget that attempted to wipe out this year's $24 billion deficit was out of balance the minute it was signed. More important, savings to this year's spending plan will ease the job of balancing the 2003-2004 budget, which Davis will propose in January. 
 

POSH RESORT
The lawmakers' Hawaii trip includes morning discussion sessions while the afternoons are free. It is being held at the Maui Sheraton, a posh resort where rooms run from $350 a night. 

Representatives of all the lawmakers said they saw no problem with the trip because the California Correctional Peace Officers Association would receive no special information or access. 

Patricia Soto, Wesson's press secretary, said the speaker arrived in Hawaii on Wednesday and plans to stay until Sunday. She said the venue of the conference had no bearing on Wesson's decision to attend. 

"If it were held in Bakersfield, he'd be there, too," said Soto. 

A spokeswoman for Brulte said he had planned the trip before the special session was called, and changed his flight plans so he could attend a meeting with Davis on Tuesday about the budget. 

Cox's spokesman scoffed at the idea that lawmakers were neglecting the budget crisis, saying that the Legislature was not in session and that no interest groups had complained they were not being given a chance to give input on the budget. 

"(Cox's) home number is in the phone book. He didn't miss any meetings. Had there been any pressing business, he would have been here," said spokesman Peter DeMarco. 

In 2000, prison guards contributed nearly $1.9 million to dozens of state senators and Assembly members of both parties. During the current election cycle, the union has given $15,000 to Wesson, $6,000 to Brulte and $2,000 to Cox. 

In March, lawmakers and Davis approved a six-year contract with the union that contained 37 percent in pay increases. The contract eventually will cost California taxpayers $518 million each year, according to a state audit. 

The Hawaii trip was scheduled when December was expected to be a quiet month -- normally lawmakers are sworn in and then go away until January. This time is often used for fact-finding missions or other trips. 

But this year's special session has thrown a monkey wrench into those plans. 

A delegation of lawmakers was supposed to travel to Cuba next week, but that trip has been canceled. 

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, did not attend the Hawaii trip. 

Davis was in Los Angeles on Thursday, meeting with his budget advisers. 
 

CONSTITUENCIES ORGANIZE
Meanwhile, around the state groups were already fighting against potential budget cuts, some arguing in favor of increased taxes instead. 

A coalition of local government officials called on lawmakers to roll back recent reductions in the vehicle license fee, saying that it would protect essential local services such as police and fire and help reduce the budget deficit by $4 billion. 

One of the attractions for the car tax increase is that Democrats believe they can pass a simple majority vote bill allowing the Davis administration to boost the fees. 

Education groups reacted angrily to reports that Davis will take $1.9 billion from schools. They opened the California School Boards Association's annual convention in San Francisco by accusing Davis of solving adult problems on the backs of children. 

"Teachers have embraced the governors' school accountability program and seen test scores go up and dropouts go down," said Kent Mitchell, president of the San Francisco teachers union. "Now, millions of parents and thousands of teachers will hold the Legislature and governor accountable for the promises they have made to the children of California." 

Chronicle staff writers Nanette Asimov and Paul Feist contributed to this report. / E-mail Lynda Gledhill at  [email protected] . 

Orange County Register Article Link

Friday, December 6, 2002

Sacramento surfari 

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. In a similar way, California's top politicians took a junket to Hawaii this Wednesday to Friday even as the state's budget crisis has worsened to a deficit of between $21 billion and $30 billion for fiscal 2003-04. 

The bash was hosted by the "California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which gives millions of dollars to legislators each year," reported the Sacramento Bee. The union is one of the most powerful political forces in the state. 

Up to 20 legislators are attending. The top three are Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Culver City, Assembly Republican leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks and Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga. 

"All three are paying for their airfare and hotel themselves, most likely out of their campaign funds, according to their aides," the Bee noted. But where does their campaign cash come from? In 2001-02, the Peace Officers Association gave Mr. Wesson $15,000, Mr. Cox $2,000 and Sen. Brulte $6,000 in campaign cash.

With a special session of the Legislature to begin Monday to deal with the deficit, this is a time these legislators should be sharpening red pencils, not frolicking with special interests in the Hawaiian surf.

Excellent!

December 9, 2002 

George Skelton:
Capitol Journal
Lawmakers Roll Up Sleeves ... and Hula
 

SACRAMENTO -- SACRAMENTO

Our legislative leaders have been boondoggling in Hawaii while Sacramento bleeds a rapidly widening flow of red ink. Their attention is urgently needed back home. But let's look at the big picture.

You recall the background:

The prison guards union -- a generous donor of political money and, in turn, recipient of state government largess -- feted lawmakers last week at a Maui resort. It was called a "conference" -- political gab in the morning, then golf, the pool ...

Three of the four top leaders -- and several other lawmakers -- fled California's near-bankrupt capital two days after the new Legislature was sworn in. The trio were Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga and Assembly GOP Leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks.

Veteran Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) had the good sense to stay home. "I didn't feel like going to Hawaii," he says. Fact is, Burton is a political workaholic who can't sit still for two minutes, especially on an island.

But about that big picture:

Union lobbyists and legislators argue that few tax dollars were spent. In fact, they say, not even union dollars paid for the lawmakers' travel. They dug into their own pockets (most likely their political kitties).

Also, they'll tell you, this makes for tight bonding—these legislators and lobbyists chatting casually in their Hawaiian shirts over breadfruit and coconut milk.

"Frankly, I think we'd all be better off if [Gov. Gray] Davis had gone along," says political analyst Tony Quinn. "If those people could deal with Davis in a social atmosphere, they'd get along better."

Besides, it's noted, there wasn't much action last week in the Capitol. Lawmakers took the oath Monday. Davis met with leaders Tuesday. Then it was off to Hawaii. The governor didn't propose his $10.2-billion package of spending cuts until Friday.

They'll all be back today for the convening of a special budget session called by the governor.

Nothing illegal about traipsing off to Maui. Just capitalizing on some perks of office. Schmoozing. Relaxing.

But let's take a closer look at this picture. At the blemishes.

Even if legislators did pay for the travel out of their campaign accounts, so what? That's money from special interests, including the 26,000-member guards union. The guards gave Wesson $15,000, Brulte $6,000, Cox $2,000. Now it's legally laundered into boondoggle dollars.

What's more, these indirectly are taxpayer dollars. Where do the guards get their money to donate? Same place as teachers. The public purse.

The guards have given Davis about $1.5 million during his first term and, last winter, won a 37% pay hike spread over five years. You'd hope that labor contract would be renegotiated, since the state is facing a deficit of perhaps $30 billion.

"We're seeking negotiations with all [employee] units," state Finance Director Tim Gage said Friday. "We're asking them to recognize that the state is in a dire financial circumstance."

Wonder whether the guards' lobbyists agreed to any pay rollbacks during all that bonding with legislative leaders in Hawaii?

It's fair to ask, during this bleak time of certain budget cuts and probable tax hikes, just how do the disabled in nursing homes and the middle-class moms worried about their kids' schooling bond with legislative leaders?

"I'd like to have that kind of access," says Pat Leary, lobbyist for the California State Assn. of Counties, which does not contribute campaign money. "This is about the fairness of the budget process."

It's another example of why we need public financing of campaigns. The public, not money-doling special interests, should be buying off the politicians. That be the perception and the reality. Now it's often neither.

"It's understandable why voters are turning out in decreasing numbers," says Paul Ryan, who pushes campaign reform at the Center for Governmental Studies. "They perceive their elected officials to be bought out by large campaign contributors. And they consider their vote to have little influence on public policy."

More immediately, tropical junkets with money-lubricating interests hardly instill public confidence in legislators who must return home and begin whacking the people's services and hiking their taxes.

But the rationale I find most lame is that, hey, nothing was happening back at the office. I've got no work to do. Real leaders generate work and create action.

I'd wondered why the lawmakers didn't stay in session last Monday and start staunching the red ink. Why wait for the governor? Now we know.

A lousy start for a new Legislature -- its leaders acting like undisciplined gluttons who can't keep their hands off a dessert tray.

Frame it anyway they want, this picture just doesn't look good.

 http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-hawaii9dec09001448.story

THE NATION
A Little R&R in Maui Precedes the Budget Battle
Between golf, snorkeling and relaxing in the sun, several lawmakers attend a conference sponsored by the prison guard union.
By Nancy Vogel
Times Staff Writer

December 9 2002

LAHAINA, Hawaii -- At 7 a.m. Saturday, California Sen. Richard Alarcon, a Democrat from Sylmar, ordered a coffee to go from the terrace restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel here. A warm breeze from the beach crossed the resort's palm grove and koi pond and whispered across the veranda, launching another lovely December day in Hawaii.

Today, Alarcon will be back in Sacramento to confront an ugly task: cutting government services and possibly raising taxes to close a projected revenue gap bigger than the entire budgets of many states.

But over the weekend, he was hundreds of miles away -- in Maui, snorkeling, working out at the hotel fitness center and playing golf at taxpayers' expense.

Like nearly a dozen fellow lawmakers, Alarcon flew to Maui on Wednesday to attend a conference sponsored by the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the 26,000-member union of prison guards. The conference involved three morning panel discussions on Thursday and Friday -- one of which Alarcon skipped -- leaving lawmakers ample time for play before their departure Sunday.

Attendees included three out of four of California's legislative leaders, and the wives of many of the lawmakers. Most of the politicians promised to pay for the Maui trip with their own money or campaign accounts, which in some cases include thousands of dollars in donations from the prison guards.

But Alarcon said he would have the Senate -- California taxpayers, in other words -- foot the bill for his $450 flight. The rest of the costs, including his $300-a-night room at the swank Sheraton, would partly be covered with the tax-free $125 senators receive each working day for living expenses.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't think there was a benefit in coming here," said Alarcon, looking island casual in khaki shorts and a T-shirt. "Relationship-building is critical in this business."

But what some lawmakers call "relationship building," others call special access that might translate into extra clout for prison guards when budget negotiations get underway in earnest. Advocates for the poor and schools, for instance, were working last week to protect their share of a shrinking state budget. But only the prison guard representatives, whose members recently received a sizable pay hike from the state government, hobnobbed with leaders of the Legislature on the sands of Maui.

Those attending the two-day conference -- union leaders, lawmakers and a few lobbyists -- said no special favoritism would result from the get-together, which featured seminars on state issues as well as free time for golf and other recreation. Instead, they described it as a forum that allows them to talk more openly and honestly than the partisan posturing of the Capitol usually permits.

"It's not like when we're in Sacramento," Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) insisted from her hotel suite overlooking world-famous Ka'anapali Beach. "We can sit down and have candid discussions about the budget."

The senator said she is paying "every penny" of the Maui excursion from her own pocket. She certainly isn't hiding it from voters. While other lawmakers snorkeled, golfed or shopped, Figueroa spent Saturday morning in her hotel room, signing two boxes of Christmas cards for constituents. The cards, purchased at the hotel gift shop, feature the Hawaiian Christmas greeting -- "Mele Kalikimaka."

*

Watchdogs Offended

Government watchdogs say there is much to find offensive in the Hawaii trip.

"All of the major social programs in the state are going to be on the chopping block," said Paul Ryan, a project director at the nonprofit Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. Groups that lack the resources to host appealing fetes for legislators, he argued, wield less clout and are more vulnerable to severe cuts to their programs.

Such coziness -- and the perception of the influence it creates -- also make voters cynical, Ryan argued. "When we have voters who feel that their votes matter far less than campaign contributions being given, such as from CCPOA," he said, "that's a problem."

Over the last few decades, the prison guards association has gradually become a Capitol heavyweight with few peers. The union, known for its strategic support of Democrats and Republicans, helped to elect Davis in 1998 by contributing $2.1 million to his campaign. Since then, the union has given Davis an additional $1.46 million in direct and indirect donations.

Announcing his $10-billion budget-cutting package Friday, Davis said no area of government would be spared. The Department of Corrections, however, fared better than most. Under Davis' proposals, the agency would lose $13.56 million from its overall budget of about $5 billion. By comparison, Davis proposes $74.3 million in midyear cuts, from an overall budget of $4.48 billion, to the University of California, and nearly $60 million, from a budget of $3.45 billion, in reductions for the state university system. This year the guards union won pay raises of 37%, spread over five years, from the Davis administration, a package that will cost more than $500 million annually when fully implemented. Only one legislator, state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), voted against the raises.

In the debate over how to close California's budget gap, Davis has suggested reopening some employee contracts, though the prison guards have not been singled out.

Despite the criticism that has dogged their trip, lawmakers who made the trek to Hawaii offered no apologies. Among them was Assembly Minority Leader Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks).

Wearing a "Lahaina Yacht Club" T-shirt and navy blue shorts, Cox said his trip, and that of his wife, would be covered by campaign and personal funds. He also said he spent "an appreciable amount of time" during the week with Mike Jimenez, the prison guard union president, discussing ways to reduce prison costs.

"I make no apologies for being here," he said. "This was a legitimate legislative conference."

Cox added: "I would have gone to Bakersfield if that's where the event was."

"But I might have stayed home," interjected his wife, Maggie, drawing a sharp look from her husband.

Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson looked well-rested Saturday as he reclined on a lounge chair overlooking azure waves and the black rock cliff of Pu'u Keka'a.

But Wesson, wearing shorts, a tan polo shirt and bright white tennis shoes, said the trip, pleasant as it may have been, would not change the fact that he gives the state's prison guards no more consideration than any other special interest group in Sacramento.

*

Taking the Heat

"Sometimes when you're an elected official you have to take the heat," said the Culver City Democrat. "I can take the heat."

Wesson said he worked throughout the trip. Even during a dinner of filet mignon and coconut-crusted mahi mahi at a Lahaina restaurant, Wesson said he and Cox worked -- handling Assembly housekeeping duties such as committee and seating assignments.

Wesson said no taxpayer money will be spent for Assembly members traveling to Maui. His trip, as well as his wife's and a staff member's, will be paid for with campaign funds, which can be spent on travel so long as it involves a political, legislative or governmental purpose.

Jim Brulte, the Senate's Republican leader, plans to pay for his trip from his officeholder account -- a fund to which people and corporations can donate to cover a lawmaker's expenses. After losing a golf tournament Saturday afternoon and using the Internet in the hotel's business center to check the results of a Senate race in Louisiana, Brulte said he would take a nap.

He brushed aside those who suggest it was inappropriate for legislators to gather with leaders of the prison guards union even as Davis was unveiling potentially far-reaching budget cuts.

"Should I turn down an invitation to speak in Hawaii simply because Gray Davis has bankrupted California?" said Brulte. "I don't think so."

Other people on the trip included Sens. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) and Jim Battin (R-La Quinta) and Assemblyman Russ Bogh (R-Cherry Valley). Also attending was Board of Equalization member Bill Leonard, a former legislator.

*

Times staff writers Dan Morain and Jenifer Warren in Sacramento contributed to this report. 

Guards' union opposes Davis plan for new $220 million death row

By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer - (Published February 27, 2003)
SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's influential prison guards' union came out Thursday against Gov. Gray Davis' proposal to spend $220 million to build a new death row at San Quentin State Prison, shocking administration officials who had expected the union's support.
"The timing is just not right," said Lance Corcoran, spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association - not when the state is eyeing program cuts for education and the elderly to trim a budget deficit that could reach $34.6 billion.

"It's needed, sure, but this is not the year to be doing it," Corcoran said. "There are ways we could make it better in the short term without spending $220 million."

Part of the union's opposition is driven by the administration's shuttering of the Northern California Women's Facility in Stockton.

The administration plans to eventually convert it to a men's reception center to replace the San Quentin intake area that in turn would be closed to make room for the new condemned unit.

Union president Mike Jimenez plans to lead a rally by nearly 100 correctional officers at the Stockton prison Friday afternoon.

The union is one of the state's top political campaign donors. It made well over $1 million in political donations to Davis last year, including $251,000 to his re-election campaign two months after he signed legislation implementing what critics have labeled a lucrative labor contract.

Despite opposition from the union and the Legislative Analyst's Office, Davis is committed to including the death row money in this year's budget, said Steve Green, spokesman for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency. The $220 million would come from bonds, not the general fund that pays for most services.

"With the fiscal constraints California is facing, it probably makes more sense to renovate an existing prison than to build a new prison," said Davis spokesman Byron Tucker.

The current death row on the edge of San Francisco Bay was built in 1934 to hold 68 inmates, and is run-down, structurally deficient and inadequate to hold the 604 inmates currently awaiting execution, Tucker said.

"I'm very surprised and shocked at their decision," said San Quentin State Prison spokesman Lt. Vernell Crittendon. "This proposed plan was based solely on staff safety and in the view of public safety. Their decision not to support it I found to be quite surprising and unsettling."

The Stockton women's prison is underused and can be closed temporarily to save $12 million over the next 1 1/2 years, Green said. The administration intends to renovate the cells there and encircle the facility with an electric fence at a cost of $10.5 million to turn it into a male intake center.

"Basically the money we save is going to go back into renovation," Green said.

The proposed new condemned unit at San Quentin would hold 1,000 men and replace the current patchwork of dilapidated facilities with a modern, high-security design.