State Sen. Elliott on Ivey prison proposal: ‘I think that’s a mistake — I think it’s a bad deal for the taxpayer’

On Thursday, the Ivey administration unveiled its plan to lease three new prisons, which would be privately constructed and owned.

The facilities, which would be built in Escambia, Elmore and Bibb Counties, would have the Alabama Department of Corrections as a tenant and would not require the approval of the Alabama legislature.

During an appearance on Friday’s broadcast of “The Jeff Poor Show” on Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5, State Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Daphne) criticized the plan, calling it a “bad deal for the taxpayer.”

“The governor has chosen a go-it-alone take on this, and most of the reporting on it I’ve seen, and even some comments from my colleagues is, ‘Well, the legislature has failed to act on this,'” Elliott said. “And while that may be true, that’s a past legislature and a past governor. A third of this legislature is new. This governor wasn’t governor the last time we attempted to look at this problem, and the issues weren’t the same. Right now, we’re seeing historically low bond rates. And it makes sense for the state to handle on one of the core functions of government here, which is housing our prisoners.”

“Instead, we have this administration and this governor choosing a go-it-alone type of method in what everybody would agree is a much more expensive endeavor by leasing these prisoners, where you’re paying a private company a premium to build them and then lease them back to you,” he continued. “I think that’s a mistake. I think it’s a bad deal for the taxpayer. And I have not seen a satisfactory explanation on the cost-savings side of this. And frankly, do not believe that when this is said and done that this program will pay for itself through cost savings from personnel savings, overtime savings and simply maintenance savings. I think at the end of the day, long after the architects of this plan have gone and left public office, the people of the state of Alabama will be left holding the bag of a very, very expensive solution.”

Elliott likened the Ivey administration proposal to the failed I-10 Mobile Bay Bridge public-private partnership proposal.

“[U]s along the coast kind of harken back to another situation where that happened, and that would have been the I-10 bridge, where a public-private partnership was proposed because we couldn’t figure out the state revenue, the state department of transportation couldn’t put it together,” Elliott said. “And you remember what happened with that. And I’m worried we’re headed down this same path where it is a much more expensive solution for Alabama taxpayers than simply government doing the job that government should be doing, which is working together to come up with a solution for some very basic core functions of government, like transportation and housing our prisoners.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.