Town Caught in Middle of Federal Prison Debate

The good people of Taft, Calif., spent 10 years jumping through hoops to get a federal prison built in their community, hoping the injection of hundreds of well-paying jobs would give a boost to their sputtering oil-based economy.

The brand-new $49-million facility sits 10 miles southeast of town, ready to handle some 2,000 low-security inmates. A specially built $5-million sewage treatment plant hums nearby.

But no prisoners while away their sentences at the correctional facility. The sewage plant tirelessly treats thousands of gallons of unpolluted water. Local officials fear that the prison may not open for two more years.

The hang-up comes from a federal policy debate in Washington over who should run the place--the Feds or a private company--and Taft has gotten caught in the middle.

Designated in the waning days of Congress as the nation’s first low-security federal prison to be run by a private company, the lengthy process of getting proposals and letting contracts is playing out at a time when many Taftians had hoped a bustling federal correctional facility would be gearing up for full operation.

To make matters worse, the federal government waffled on the privatization issue. It said one thing and did another--and then did it again--leaving local officials steaming and the new prison filled with nothing but echoes.

Now that Washington has finally spoken, the community must wait for a private contractor to be selected before the prison opens its doors to miscreants late next year--or perhaps later.

The empty prison, largely completed last May, has split the Taft City Council. Angry developers are left with unsold lots for the still-awaited prison workers. And City Hall has fired off a letter to the local congressman, Bill Thomas.

“This action has devastated and demoralized the entire community,” then-Mayor Paul Ackermann penned to Thomas in late September. “From my perspective, these are the type of nightmare scenarios that undermine the confidence of the American people and give taxpayers cause to question the wisdom of government at all levels.”

Rather than an example of partnership, the Taft prison episode is more of a cautionary tale to local government.

Federal officials think they have all the answers, this tale goes, but don’t believe it.

Federal Turnabout Not Well-Received

Last summer, things were on track. A federal warden had signed a two-year lease on a house in Taft, and a dozen managers and their families began relocating from other parts of the country.

The Bureau of Prisons held a job fair to recruit 200 local workers--to supplement an almost equal number of federal employees expected to settle in the area.

Then, in July, the Senate weighed in and asserted its preference for a private prison.

At the end of September, during the hurly-burly of adjournment, Congress and President Clinton made it official: Taft would be run as a five-year demonstration project to study the pros and cons of a privately run low-security prison.

Instead of applause, the news was greeted in Taft with a cranky outbreak of finger-pointing between local officials and the Feds, including Thomas, a Bakersfield Republican and certifiable Capitol Hill heavyweight not used to taking any heat from the home folks.

“That makes him about as popular in Taft as the plague,” said City Manager Eric Ziegler when the privatization announcement hit town.

Thomas, renowned on Capitol Hill for his deep enjoyment of rhetorical fisticuffs, was offended that some Taft citizens felt he was asleep at the switch on the privatization issue--or worse, spake with forked tongue.

After years of working to bring the prison to Taft, it was an irritating what-have-you-done-for-me-lately moment.

Thomas dismissed the letter from Mayor Ackermann as “filled with hyperbole.”

Thomas said the naysayers are few--”a small clique, centered around developers”--who had bet on a federally run prison and its presumably heftier payroll.

But to Councilman Jerry Gibby, the problem was the federal government’s seeming feints on who would run the prison.

“We got promised this, this and this, and they said it would be great for you,” Gibby said. “And when it’s delivered, it isn’t anything. I feel like I bought a Cadillac with a five-year, 100,000-mile warranty, and the dealer delivers a 1963 Pinto with 300,000 miles on it.”

Many Taftians continue to stew over the idle prison.

“We have a bitter taste in our mouth from dealing with the federal government,” said Ackermann, who handed off the mayor’s title when the council reorganized after the November election.

Town Embraces Original Plans

It wasn’t always this way. In the mid-1980s, the notion of a federal prison in Taft seemed like a swell idea.

Tied to fickle oil prices and surrounded by vast oil company land holdings, Taft, a city of 15,000 about 35 miles southwest of Bakersfield, took kindly to the presentations by representatives from the Bureau of Prisons. The bureau was on the prowl for a prison site.

Ackermann recalled the effectiveness of the pitch: “Gee, we’ll have these well-paid federal folks coming in, we’ll diversify our economy, we’ll have a nice-looking facility. ‘Yeah,’ the thinking went, ‘we would welcome it.’ ”

Taft began the quest.

A site was eventually found, endangered species accommodated, the sewer plant constructed.

In its earliest discussion phases, the facility was envisioned as a federally run prison.

Then in February 1995, the White House announced plans to privatize Taft (and, originally, four prisons in other states) as part of the Clinton administration’s National Performance Review. The idea was to expand the private sector’s role in federal corrections activities--and reduce the federal payroll.

Kathleen Hawk, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, declared during testimony on Capitol Hill the following April that “the majority of future pretrial detention, minimum and low-security federal prisons will be privatized.”

Then last June, the Justice Department--which oversees the Bureau of Prisons--shifted gears. Citing concerns over wildcat strikes--and disturbances and escapes at some privately run detention facilities--it scrubbed the Taft privatization plan as “not in the best interest of the public.”

In a letter to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Stephen R. Colgate, an assistant attorney general, said several federal prisons scheduled for construction in the next few years would also be staffed with Bureau of Prisons personnel.

Privatization seemed dead.

“When we first found out about [privatization], we didn’t do much on it,” Gibby said. “By the time we got organized, the Democrats had dropped the idea and we let it go. But at no time were we in favor of it.”

But Hatch and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi fired back a letter citing their “strong displeasure” with the Justice policy switcheroo.

While expressing concern over wildcat strikes and disturbances, the senators wrote “that the administration and Congress, working with the private sector, can address the safety concerns while preserving . . . important pro-business, pro-savings initiatives.”

Some Senate insiders suggest another reason for the senators’ upset: the apparent role of organized labor in getting the administration to flip-flop.

This theory holds that labor unions, worried over loss of jobs and the unsettling precedent the Taft privatization would set, were able to persuade the administration to junk the plan--during an election year in which the AFL-CIO was spending $35 million to elect Democrats to Congress.

Manny Borquez, the western region vice president of the Council of Prison Locals, makes no bones about labor’s opposition.

“Instead of making $10 to $11 an hour that [unionized federal guards] do, [private guards] will make $6 an hour. They aren’t qualified, they’re not professional, they don’t come from academies, they have no background checks.”

Other labor officials said the union will lobby hard to undo the privatization of Taft when Congress convenes early next year.

Local, U.S. Officials Point Fingers

They’d better not knock on Thomas’ door.

Asked why the federal bureaucracy did a 180-degree turn on privatization, Thomas said: “I wouldn’t want to venture why Justice changed its position.”

And then he ventured anyway.

“The Justice Department, I’m quite sure, was [faced with pressures] by employee unions making a new push to control not only the Congress by enormous expenditures in this [recent] election, but also with pressures inside a Democratic administration that was doing everything it could do to make sure that unions remained dominant in any kind of a federal structure.

“The threats of low pay were mouthed by people who were supporting the union position, and those are scare tactics to try to maintain a stranglehold on federal prisons by unions.”

Make no mistake, Thomas is a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of a privately run prison in Taft. “That was our goal and we haven’t deviated from that goal.

“The proposal from the very beginning was focused on new and novel ways in which we might be able to have Taft stand out [in the selection process]. We tossed around a number of ideas,” said Thomas, “and one of them was that we would move toward privatization.”

Some local officials seemed not to know this.

“We talked to Thomas, the warden, the BOP,” said Councilman Gibby, “and were continually given assurances that privatization had no chance. Thomas’ office said not to worry about it. Even if it does pass, it will have no force of law.”

“Our political clout [in Washington] was not upfront with me. I was speaking to the wrong man. It was almost like being in the enemy’s camp and not knowing it.”

Hogwash, said Thomas. “I am not going to engage in a response to a statement . . . that officials said there was no knowledge of this and no one ever touched bases with them--because that’s simply not true.”

Thomas also adamantly disagrees with suggestions that a private corporation will pay lower wages, and he has been assured that the Bureau of Prisons is working to open the prison as soon as possible.

Aftermath of Controversy

A majority of the five-member council, including the new mayor, Bill Baker, takes a more measured view of the prison contretemps.

“This is a very conservative community,” said Baker, “and many individuals support the concept of privatization. But this one touched them in the pocketbook.”

The City Council has asked a blue-ribbon committee of local citizens to submit a fact-finding report by the end of the year, spelling out the advantages and disadvantages of privatization versus a federally run prison.

Some Taft citizens are still exasperated at the way the federal government bobbled the privatization issue. But Washington seems to have had its say on the matter and the good people of Taft, wiser now, may be closer to acceptance.

“Two houses of Congress and the president said they want privatization,” said City Manager Ziegler. “I’d say the chances of changing their minds is about nil.”