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Officials glum over prison contract nonrenewal
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McNally
YOUNGSTOWN
Mayor John A. McNally, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and the Corrections Corp. of America expressed their displeasure over the nonrenewal of a U.S. Bureau of Prisons contract to house prisoners at CCA’s Northeast Ohio Correctional Center on Hubbard Road.
“I’m tremendously disappointed in the decision,” the mayor said, noting that NEOCC’s 418 employees pay between $450,000 and $500,000 a year in city income tax.
“We look forward to hopefully working with CCA to find another contract with other entities to ensure that the facility is fully operational,” McNally said.
The nonrenewal pertains to a contract that will expire May 31, under which NEOCC houses about 1,400 inmates for the BOP. The Hubbard Road prison also houses about 580 detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service.
CCA said in a news release that the BOP hasn’t determined when it will start transferring its inmates out of NEOCC, and that CCA expects to continue to house the U.S. Marshals Service prisoners.
In the immigrant population housed under the BOP’s contract, 57 percent of the NEOCC inmates are Mexicans, and 58 percent of the immigrant prisoners are serving time for illegal entry or re-entry into the United States.
“NEOCC’s role in the federal prison system deserves to be extended; CCA, NEOCC and the Valley as a whole have earned it. I will do everything in my power to ensure that these employees have the opportunity to do what they do best and continue their jobs in the federal prison system,” Ryan said.
“While I know we did all we could to help, it is of little consolation to the 400-plus men and women who work at the facility and the city, which benefits from the prison’s economic impact,” Ryan added.
Ryan joined other U.S. representatives and Ohio’s two U.S. senators in writing a letter in August 2013 to Michael Bodine, the BOP’s contracting officer, in support of the NEOCC contract renewal.
The 2,016-bed NEOCC has an annual payroll of about $21.7 million and pays nearly $4.3 million a year in property taxes and for utilities and local goods and services, they wrote.
“Closing the facility will move jobs away from an area in desperate need of stability,” they wrote.
McNally said Jeb Beasley, the Nashville-Tenn.-based CCA’s government affairs representative, told him Monday that the BOP hasn’t given CCA any reason for the nonrenewal and that CCA is seeking an expedited in-person debriefing from BOP officials on the facility selection process.
The mayor said Beasley told him CCA has had brief discussions with other entities that might house inmates at NEOCC.
During the nine months ending Sept. 30, 2014, the Hubbard Road prison generated about $30 million in revenue from the BOP contract, according to a news release by CCA, which is a publicly traded corporation.
Chris Burke, BOP public affairs specialist, said he could confirm that the BOP has made contract awards to Moshannon Valley Correctional Center in Phillipsburg, Pa., and Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton, Okla., and that it has nonrenewed the NEOCC contract.
Burke said he could not offer any explanation for the BOP’s decision.
Under the current BOP contract, NEOCC charges $69.72 per inmate per day.
Under a contract expiring April 1, 2016, Moshannon, which is in rural central Pennsylvania, charges $65.22 per inmate per day for 1,820 inmates.
When they first urged a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress in support of the Youngstown facility last year, CCA officials said they feared the BOP might consolidate NEOCC’S contract with Moshannon’s and that the loss of the BOP contract in Youngstown would cause the elimination of most of the Youngstown jobs.
Although CCA is disappointed in the nonrenewal of the BOP contract at its Youngstown prison, Steven Owen, CCA’s senior director of public affairs, said: “We respect the decision and will work with them [BOP officials] closely to ensure a seamless transition.”
He concluded: “We will actively market the facility to provide solutions for new government partners while continuing to provide safe, secure housing to the existing federal U.S. Marshals Service population that is expected to remain at NEOCC.”