Lawmakers on the Colorado legislature’s Joint Budget Committee reversed course Wednesday, approving funding for hundreds of new state prison beds days after rejecting the same request over concerns about staffing shortages and parole backlogs.
The committee voted 5-1 to approve $2.4 million requested by the Colorado Department of Corrections for 788 additional prison beds.
This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at kunc.org.
The four Democrats on the JBC were united in blocking the request last week, saying the corrections department and the governor’s office had failed to present a comprehensive plan to address staffing shortages and delays in releasing people already eligible for parole, two factors they say are driving the overcrowding crisis in prisons and jails statewide.
But three of those Democrats, Sen. Jeff Bridges and Reps. Kyle Brown and Emily Sirota, decided to support the request on Wednesday, even though they said their underlying concerns remain unresolved.
Sirota said rejecting the funding request could have forced the state to rely more heavily on county jails to house inmates until there is room in state prisons. Denying the money could also create unsafe conditions inside state prisons, she said, including double-bunking incarcerated people or using temporary housing.
She also raised fiscal concerns.
“If we don’t approve these beds, it’s going to cost us more money that we don’t have,” Sirota said, warning, however, that she may not approve future DOC funding requests.
Brown echoed Sirota’s reluctance, stressing the need for a comprehensive plan from the governor’s office or corrections.
“I hear the safety concerns on both sides,” Brown said. “But I don’t know exactly how to communicate any better to the governor’s office that the plan that they are working under, whatever we’re calling it, is not working.”
Democrats also said they received assurances from the Polis administration that it is working on a plan to tackle the issues in Colorado’s prisons.
Republicans on the committee, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and Rep. Rick Taggart, said denying additional beds would not solve the problem.
“The fact of the matter is, we don’t have space for these individuals within the Department of Corrections,” Taggart said. “They can’t solve the other situation overnight. They just can’t solve it, and they don’t have control of it to solve it.”
Democratic Sen. Judy Amabile cast the lone no vote. She said the state should focus on releasing people rather than adding beds and that officials have still failed to make progress on that front.
“I still haven’t seen what I have been asking for, including last year, really, for us to figure out how we can get more people released,” Amabile said.
She pointed to hundreds of people who have already been approved or are eligible for parole but remain incarcerated because of housing or programming gaps.
Kyle Giddings, deputy director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, an advocacy group, criticized the JBC’s decision after Wednesday’s vote, calling it a reversal that undercuts lawmakers’ earlier demands for accountability.
“The question for the members who switched their votes is simple: what do Coloradans actually get from this decision?” Giddings said. “The Department of Corrections is a broken system that has repeatedly shown that it is ineffective, opaque, and unwilling to be transparent with either the legislature or the public.”
Giddings pointed to Colorado’s severe budget shortfall and argued the state is choosing to spend millions expanding prison capacity instead of addressing systemic failures inside the DOC.
The funding request was just a mid-year funding true up. The legislature still has to write and debate the state budget for the next fiscal year, at which point lawmakers will have an opportunity to revisit the DOC budget.
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.