THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502180510
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID M. POOLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
General Assembly conferees have reached an agreement on a $106 million package to accommodate the state's prison population, which will swell under new, no-parole policies for violent offenders.
The plan - approved by a 5-1 vote - would provide funds to construct prisons or plan for beds to accommodate some 10,340 additional inmates.
Republican Gov. George F. Allen said the plan would be inadequate to help local jails already overcrowded with state inmates, and that it would force the state to release dangerous criminals ``into our streets and neighborhoods.''
``It will endanger the safety of Virginians,'' Allen said in a statement released by his office.
But state Sen. Richard J. Holland said the proposal is a responsible measure that provides funding for prison spaces that could reasonably be built in the next few years.
Holland, a Windsor Democrat who served on the conference committee, said the plan would get new beds on line fast by including money for private prisons and shipping 500 more inmates to out-of-state prisons.
The rhetoric signals that prison construction, unlike last fall's bipartisan effort to reform the state's parole system, will become just another front in the partisan battle between Allen and the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.
Allen proposed borrowing more than $400 million to build some 9,090 prison beds over the next few years.
The assembly's conference report - put together by three senators and three delegates working to find a compromise between the prison plan each chamber passed last week - would scale back the borrowing to $97.5 million and provide $8.6 million in the 1995-96 budget. Still, the assembly plan accounts for 10,340 beds by providing funds for planning - but not construction - of some facilities.
The plan now goes before the full Senate and House of Delegates.
Holland noted that the state can build prisons only so fast; the assembly has already approved $172 million in prison construction that has yet to be put under contract.
In his statement, Allen called the conference report part of a ``cynical political game'' in which Democrats appear to solve a problem while preserving the status quo.
KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRISONS by CNB