Judge ‘Can Take’ Prisons, Governor Says

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, ruefully conceding the difficulty of running the state’s troubled prison system, said that if a federal judge follows through on a threat to name a receiver to take charge of the prisons, “He can take it.”

“It’s no sweat off my back,” the governor said Monday at a news conference after completing a tour of Mule Creek State Prison, about 40 miles southeast of Sacramento.

The governor was quick to add that he doesn’t expect that to happen. He said he had a “wonderful” phone conversation recently with U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson -- who broached the prospect of a takeover in a letter to a top aide to the governor last month -- and sought to persuade him that his commitment to improving the prisons is genuine.

“He is 100% with us,” Schwarzenegger said. “We will work together with him. I have the utmost respect for him, and together we can do it.” Judge Henderson’s office did not return a call for comment.

Schwarzenegger’s remark touched off a swift reaction from critics of the correctional system.

State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), who has led oversight hearings on the Department of Corrections this year, said: “It’s surprising that the governor would say, ‘It’s no sweat off my back.’ It’s like saying, ‘We failed and the courts must take over now because we’re not going to be able to make the reforms.’ I can’t believe he really thinks that.”

Donald Specter, executive director of the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit firm that has repeatedly sued the state over its treatment of inmates, said:

“I agree totally with the governor. The prison system is too big and too impaired by the California bureaucracy to function properly. It really needs a big jolt from somebody outside to bring about reform.”

Specter added that he hopes the judge will “take the governor up on his suggestion.”

Housing about 165,000 adult and juvenile offenders, California’s penal system is the largest system of its kind in the nation and home to a powerful prison guards union.

In recent months, the $6-billion-a-year system has weathered a string of scandals and intense scrutiny in the Legislature and the courts.

Henderson had accused the Schwarzenegger administration of a “business as usual” approach toward the prison system. He was disturbed by a new labor agreement between the state and the guards union, in which Schwarzenegger won modest wage concessions over two years in return for new union protections and benefits amounting to millions of dollars.

Henderson suggested that the governor was neglecting ‘“systemic problems” that had been “condoned for many years by the highest levels of California officials.”

This was not the first time Schwarzenegger has suggested that the prisons are a managerial nightmare. In April, he joked that California might consider outsourcing its prisons to Mexico or Vietnam.

A spokeswoman sought Monday to expand on Schwarzenegger’s position. The governor wants an improved prison system, said Terry Carbaugh, a press aide, and “is saying that should the judge feel that he can accomplish that goal in a more expedient nature, so be it. We’ll be right behind him in his effort, supporting him .... “

That said, “if the burden remains on our shoulders -- which it is -- we’ll move forward to reform the corrections system,” Carbaugh said.

Schwarzenegger took pains at Mule Creek to portray himself as eager to find solutions. Standing alongside Matthew Cate, the prison system inspector general, and other corrections officials in a prison break room, he said he had tripled the budget for the inspector general’s office, launched audits of the system and pressed for more accountability.

The governor also sought to explain the contract with the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., blaming the Legislature for the limitations.

Because lawmakers refused to roll back some $300 million in salary and benefits increases, as he had wanted, he said he had little leverage.

“I’m probably the only one in the Capitol who doesn’t owe the unions anything, because I never took any money from them,” Schwarzenegger said.

Speier suggested that the governor was passing the buck when it comes to the contract.

“He had the all-time high ratings for a governor,” she said. “The stars were aligned for him to really undo what is by most people’s description an absolutely absurd giveaway. And it didn’t happen. And the union got everything they wanted again.”

Schwarzenegger’s visit to the prison had been carefully choreographed. A production team working for the governor had hung a large blue banner in the break room to hide vending machines and provide a more attractive backdrop for the governor’s speech.

During his tour, the governor stood high in the watchtower that controls access to the electric fence surrounding the prison, as TV and news photographers took pictures from below. Other journalists were ordered to stand back.

Schwarzenegger described the system as profoundly troubled at the time he took office.

“When I became governor I found a system that was in disarray, wrapped in secrecy and with almost no accountability, financially or otherwise,” he said.