Closing would mean more than lost jobs

Such job losses affect families, local governments and the regional economy.
By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Gary Dipillo has been through all this before. He doesn't want to go through it again.
The Northeast Ohio Correctional Center guard and his 500-plus colleagues, however, may not have a choice.
They may be out of work by Aug. 18, the date the private prison has set to close unless the owner, Corrections Corporation of America, can find more inmates.
Dipillo was a production engineer at Wean United when it abruptly closed. He worked there 17 years.
He went out of town to work for the state at a prison 150 miles away. He jumped at the chance to resume working here two years ago at NOCC.
That's why the father of two college-age children doesn't plan on leaving the area even if the prison closes. He loves working at NOCC and would return if the prison closes but reopens later, which company officials say is possible.
Many of his co-workers feel the same way.
"We're from Youngstown. That's what it's all about," Dipillo said. "Let's hope this place stays. We'll see what happens."
Effects on economy: Reid Dulberger let out a long sigh when he heard news of the prison's potential closing.
The executive vice president of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce has sighed often lately. The prison job losses come in the shadow of closures of CSC Ltd. and Tartan Textiles.
"We're going through a trying time," he said.
Job losses hurt families and ripple through the regional economy that sells goods and services to the prison and its workers, Dulberger said.
Prisons spend millions of dollars a year on supplies, many of them bought from local companies.
It also hurts the city and its school district.
NOCC has an $11 million annual payroll and pays the city $250,000 a year in income tax. The company ranks No. 17 on a list of the top income tax-paying employers in the city, said Dan Brott, city income tax commissioner.
The school district sees about $600,000 in property taxes a year from the prison, said Treasurer Carolyn Funk. The company has no tax abatement.
Dulberger hopes the prison company can reopen or sell the building to another private operator to keep workers employed. Prison jobs are considered recession-proof and nobody thought that trouble getting inmates could lead to NOCC's downfall, he said.
The state has said it has no interest in the building. State inmate populations have been dropping the past few years.
The building is designed so that groupings of cells, known as pods, can be lifted with a crane and moved, said city Law Director Robert Bush Jr.
Contract ending: CCA is calling the move a temporary phase-out of NOCC.
The company's contract to house Washington, D.C., inmates ends Sept. 8. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is assuming jurisdiction for those inmates and sending them to prisons where the government already has contracts.
CCA is trying to find new customers for its 2,016-bed facility, which opened in 1997.
"In light of BOP's need to relocate these inmates, we believe that it is in the best interest of CCA to take this action at this time," said John D. Ferguson, chief executive officer. "While regrettable, we feel these actions are necessary at this time."
Employees will be offered jobs at other CCA lockups.
Safety standards: If the prison is to reopen, CCA must finish negotiating changes in its contract with the city and inmates, said Atty. Al Gerhardstein, who represents the inmates .
If the prison remains closed, it may be the best for Youngstown despite the hardships on workers, Gerhardstein said.
The contract outlined what he called minimum safety standards. Under those rules it appears CCA can't offer governments a good enough deal to make money, he said. Continuing in business may have meant cutting corners that could jeopardize public safety, he said.
"It appears when they're doing it right they can't make money," Gerhardstein said. "Maybe we're seeing where the private prison movement is going."