Subcommittee signs off on prison system spending plan

CARSON CITY — A key legislative budget panel voted Wednesday on final details of a $515.1 million, two-year spending plan for Nevada’s prison system that’s about $30 million higher than Gov. Jim Gibbons’ proposal.

Decisions by the Senate-Assembly budget subcommittee included a vote to maintain 10 medical positions at Nevada State Prison in Carson City at a cost of about $1.9 million. The positions were cut under Gibbons’ plan to close the old prison, but the subcommittee voted previously to keep it open.

The subcommittee also voted previously to keep open a Tonopah camp that houses inmates who help fight wildfires throughout Nevada. Based on that decision, the panel voted to restore full funding for camp operations, which includes a staff of 12, at a cost of $2.2 million for the next two fiscal years.

The panel accepted Gibbons’ plan to continue funding for a nursing position that was reassigned to the Warm Springs Correctional Center from a prison camp that closed in July 2008, at a cost of about $192,000 over the next two years.

State Corrections Director Howard Skolnik said the decision to keep the position will save money by allowing a substantial overtime reduction.

The subcommittee also approved adding a position to staff the law library at Warm Springs at a cost of $126,000.

The subcommittee was able to save “considerable dollars” at the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in North Las Vegas, said Sen. Joyce Woodhouse, D-Henderson, the subcommittee chairwoman. Members voted to fund only 100 beds of a 300-bed expansion proposed for the prison.

“A survey was conducted of the state’s inmate population, and we found that we don’t have as many inmates as projected that was anticipated,” Woodhouse said after the hearing.

Skolnik said he expected the subcommittee’s actions, adding, “In general we feel pretty good, given the economic crisis in the state, about what the Legislature has done for the department.”