Polanco Takes Aim at Prison Guards’ Pay

State Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) charged Friday that taxpayers and state services for senior citizens and children are threatened by a giveaway contract negotiated by the Davis administration and California’s prison guards union.

Polanco, who has sparred with the union before, criticized the agreement at the outset of a hearing on Gov. Gray Davis’ proposed budget for the Department of Corrections, whose current spending is $277 million in the red.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. is one of Davis’ biggest campaign donors, having contributed more than $2.5 million to him in recent years. It also makes major contributions to legislators. Davis administration officials defended the contract; union leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

Polanco identified what he said were costly contract provisions and argued that they should be reviewed because legislators and the governor are being forced to cut programs and increase taxes to overcome a $23.6-billion deficit from the state budget that takes effect July 1.

Polanco criticized potentially costly provisions in the five-year agreement, including shortened work hours, additional vacation time, extra compensation for keeping physically fit and the ability of guards to retire at 90% of their salary at the age of 50 starting in 2006. The contract also links guards’ salaries to those of the California Highway Patrol and big-city law enforcement departments, another provision with which Polanco took issue.

“What does the taxpayer get out of this agreement, or is this just a one-sided giveaway?” Polanco asked.

Defending the agreement, Marty Morgenstern, director of the state Department of Personnel Administration, said that some figures and contract provisions cited by Polanco were inaccurate or had long been routine policies for agreements with state employee unions.

He bristled at Polanco describing the pact as a sweetheart agreement with the union. “Rather than a sweetheart deal, we spent seven months in negotiations. They often were acrimonious and rarely pretty,” Morgenstern said.

Polanco, however, demanded that Morgenstern and Edward Alameida, director of the Department of Corrections, identify specific costs of each area covered in the contract. The two officials often failed to provide them and occasionally disagreed over what the costs might be.

The agreement between the state and the prison guards union was negotiated a few months ago and quickly ratified by the Legislature, few of whose members knew its details.

Polanco, long a foe of the association and an opponent of the contract when it was ratified, said no one in the Legislature knows how much the contract will cost in overtime payments that would occur as a result of a shortened workday.

“This is a sweet, sweet sweetheart deal that is ... going to cost, cost taxpayers a lot of money,” Polanco told reporters.

At another point, he said, “This union has tremendous influence. We know it. They put fear into people. [Legislators] will do ... whatever [the union] wants for fear it will come after them in an election year. They play hardball.”

Polanco was the target of a campaign by the union last year to deny him a seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

He abandoned the race shortly before election day as union leaders pressed their campaign against him.

He is a supporter of private prisons, which the union opposes.

Administration officials have defended the agreement, noting that prison guards work in a hostile and violent environment.

In March, two months before he signed the ratification bill, Davis received $251,000 in campaign donations from the union.

Polanco said he doubted that the contract could be rescinded, but that legislators should know how much it will cost, particularly because Davis’ proposed budget would cut deeply into health care programs for the poor as well as child-care services and assistance to senior citizens.