This is an opinion column.
First, Alabama prison officials floated the idea of building four new mega prisons, including one to replace the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.
But then, they said to heck with the new women’s facility and reduced the plan to just three new prisons for the guys.
Originally, Alabama’s new prisons were supposed to cost about $900 million.
But later, the state said they’d cost “no more than” $88 million a year for as long as 30 years. If you don’t have a calculator handy, that comes out to a little more than $2.6 billion — or about three times what these things were first supposed to cost.
In the beginning, the state wanted a bond deal to build prisons it would own.
Ultimately, it proposed a “build-lease” plan. Which is to say, when Alabama is done paying more than $2 billion to private companies for these prisons, it won’t actually own anything. Instead, it might have to repeat this process all over again.
If you’re wondering just what the heck the state is doing and whether Alabama can build a prison without a state official eventually winding up there, you’re not alone. I am, too. But Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama prison commissioner Jeff Dunn won’t say much about what they have planned next.
Because, a lot has changed since this whole process began about four years ago, but one thing throughout has remained constant — secrecy.
From the beginning, the governor’s office has dressed this thing up with language that makes it sound like an open bid process without actually being an open bid process.
Instead of “requests for proposals,” the state solicited “expressions of interest.” Which makes you wonder, are they trying to build prisons or get a date to prom?
The state has held public meetings to open these proposals — without then making whatever it opened public. Since the beginning, the state has denied public information requests from the media, including AL.com.
At last, this week, Gov. Kay Ivey made some details public, specifically who will build-lease the prisons and where they will build-lease them. A joint partnership called Alabama Prison Transformation Partners will build one prison in Bibb County. A group led by Core Civic will build the other two in Elmore and Escambia counties.
That’s the most information we’ve had yet. But there are still important questions unanswered, like whether the state’s lease payments will be fixed or if these landlords can raise the price of rent whenever they want to, whether the parties involved have any conflicts of interest, or if this whole thing is just a step toward privatizing Alabama prisons.
Instead, the governor’s office has said it will only make those details public after the state has entered into a contract with the prison developers.
Or in other terms, when it’s too late for anyone to object.
In my career covering politics and government, one thing has remained constant — the greater the secrecy the greater the risk for corruption. And this is a state with a serious corruption problem. Of Alabama’s last six governors three have either pleaded guilty to or been convicted of crimes committed while in office. Never mind how many lawmakers have gotten caught with their hands in the till, including a former Alabama House speaker who is supposed to report to prison this week finally.
The Ivey administration acts like none of that stuff ever happened.
But if they don’t trust you with that information, why should we trust them?
We have every reason to demand transparency.
We have every right to expect this process to be open.
We deserve to know what’s in those contracts before Ivey puts her signature on the bottom. Because she’s not signing just her name on that line. She’s signing yours and mine.
Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.
You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram.
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