Gov. Names New Prisons Chief

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, struggling to find an answer to the ongoing woes inside the state prison system, named a new corrections chief Wednesday -- the man who since this spring has run the department.

Schwarzenegger said he was handing the reins of the massive Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to James Tilton, a three-decade veteran of state government who has been acting secretary since April.

Tilton, 57, will earn $220,000 a year, making him one of the state’s highest-paid employees. His predecessor, Roderick Q. Hickman, earned $131,412 a year when he stepped down in February.

The governor offered no explanation for the dramatic, nearly 70%, raise, but noted in a statement that “California’s correctional system is at a crisis point.”

Schwarzenegger said Tilton would “deliver cost-effective solutions to relieve the dangerous overcrowding in our state prisons, as well as prepare inmates so they do not re-offend when they return to our communities.”

Tilton was unavailable for comment.

As corrections secretary, he occupies what is probably the most challenging job in state government.

He oversees a department with a budget of more than $8 billion, 58,000 employees and 33 adult prisons holding roughly 172,000 inmates. He is also responsible for the state’s 3,000 juvenile prisoners, as well as more than 110,000 parolees.

In recent years, the state prisons have been beset by problems that include overcrowding, a deteriorating inmate medical care system and a recidivism rate that is the nation’s highest, with more than half of all parolees returning to prison within several years.

The job is also complicated by the role the federal courts have come to play. This year, a federal receiver was put in charge of the healthcare system for inmates and a special master oversees mental health care in prisons under the supervision of a federal judge.

And then there is the 30,000-member prison guards union that has exceptional clout in Sacramento.

The union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., is deadlocked in negotiations with the Schwarzenegger administration over a contract to replace one that expired in July.

When he was appointed acting secretary earlier this year, Tilton said his tenure would be temporary, while the administration conducted a nationwide search for a permanent chief.

His top priority, he said then, was to “put the department’s fiscal house in order” and “assemble a management team to turn the department around.”

Since then, he has brought in top assistants and recently said he relished the opportunity to revive a correctional system that has been widely maligned by legislators, judges and other critics.

Before his appointment, Tilton served as a program budget manager for the Department of Finance, overseeing corrections, consumer services and other areas. In the 1980s and ‘90s, he was deputy director of administrative services in corrections, responsible for peace officer selection, personnel, training, budget matters and environmental health and safety.

jenifer.warren@latimes.com