I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Over the past four years New Mexico has potentially given up more than $18 million in never-assessed penalties despite repeated contractual violations by two private prison operators, a new legislative report says.
By contract New Mexico can levy penalties against GEO Group and Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) when staffing vacancies at the facilities they manage in Hobbs, Grants, Clayton and Santa Rosa stay at 10 percent or more for 30-consecutive days.
That penalty has been triggered regularly, state records show and the new report by the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) confirms.
Staffing levels at three of the four privately operated facilities hovered above 10 percent for much of last year, state records show. And at the fourth facility, the vacancy rate was above the 10 percent trigger in six of the 13 months the state records covered.
The LFC report, issued last week, reached the $18 million figure after finding that the two firms had triggered $5 million in penalties last year because their facilities had higher vacancy rates than allowed by contract. The LFC then assumed similar vacancy trends at three of the facilities for the four years previous, and two years previous at the fourth facility, which has only been open for two years.
The state’s corrections secretary, Joe Williams, has defended not collecting the penalties, saying the state’s contracts with the two firms gave him discretion to fine the two companies and he chose not to.
Corrections agency doesn’t track vacancies at private prisons
But the 11-page LFC report found that Williams’ agency never regularly tracked vacancy rates at the four facilities, meaning it did not even know how much the state was forgoing in money by not penalizing the two firms.
“NMCD does not regularly compile vacancy rates, contractor staff pay rates, contractor vacancy savings or review potential penalty amount in its central office, but should do so immediately,” the report said.
The report also noted that the state appeared to have been spending “large sums of contract funding on vacant private prison staff positions.”
Williams, who worked for GEO as a warden prior to becoming the state’s corrections secretary, did not have a response to the legislative report Monday other than a one-sentence statement: “We will be reviewing the report and we will present our response to the LFC.”
While the potential penalties to the two firms amounted to more than $18 million, the savings to the two firms by not fully staffing their facilities was larger, the LFC report noted.
The $18 million in potential penalties equals the salaries the companies did not pay, the report said. Add in benefits that also were never paid by the two firms, and the amount saved is more than $22 million, the LFC report said.
Representatives of both firms could not reached for comment Monday.
Williams has subsequently asked GEO, which manages three of the four facilities, to “perform this analysis and provide other information to ‘defend my position’ of not enforcing contract penalties,” the report noted.
But the LFC report said Williams and his agency should have performed this task all along “to assist in decision making” about whether to penalize the companies or, if not, provide a “rationale for why not to enforce agreed upon contractual provisions.”
Williams’ decision not to collect the penalties from the two firms has put him on a collision course with state lawmakers, some of whom are questioning the action.
Williams acknowledged to The Independent two weeks ago that he hadn’t penalized the two companies because, he said, they were doing an outstanding job managing the four facilities.
The issue of the uncollected penalties comes at a time when state government is scrounging for every dollar because of hard economic times.
The building controversy also threatens to stir up a long-simmering debate over New Mexico’s decision years ago to pay private firms to operate several of its correctional facilities. Critics have long vilified the agreements as a giveaway to private, out-of-state companies while some state lawmakers have quietly wondered if the companies are making out-sized profits.
