By PAUL HAMMEL
Nebraska Examiner
LINCOLN — The State of Nebraska is one step closer to embarking on perhaps its most expensive construction project in history.
On an 8-0 vote, with one member absent, the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to recommend a final transfer of $95.8 million to complete the funding of a new, 1,500-bed prison in eastern Nebraska.
That final funding would bring the total cost of the facility to nearly $366 million, which would likely set a record for construction of a single state project.
By comparison, the new Nebraska football complex is costing $165 million, and the Buffett Cancer Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center cost $323 million. The just-completed Lincoln South Beltway cost $352 million.
Initial cost estimates of $270 million for the new prison have risen steadily because of inflation, and the $365.7 million total includes $14.9 million already spent on design and engineering work.
The spending must be approved by the full Legislature and signed by Gov. Jim Pillen, who had requested the final funding for the much-delayed prison in his proposed budget.
First new prison since 2001
Nebraska has not built a new, stand-alone prison since 2001, when the 960-bed Tecumseh State Prison opened.
A new prison has been discussed for more than a decade to address the state’s chronic prison overcrowding, which ranks among the worst in the country. Talk was put on hold for attempts at reforms to reduce the prison population and avoid building a new prison, but those efforts have fallen short of projected reductions.
Nebraska’s nine prison facilities routinely hold about 1,600 more inmates than they’re designed to house. That problem, and a shortage of staff, has contributed to disruption of rehabilitation programming, recreation and family visitation. Dozens of plastic floor cots are spread out each night at one prison for inmates to sleep on due to the lack of cell space.
Two senators opposed
Two key senators on corrections issues indicated Thursday that they will oppose spending for a new prison unless funds are devoted to increasing job opportunities and improving rehabilitation of inmates.
“I hope we find money in the budget for re-entry programs and economic development that prevents people from going to prison,” said State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, who chairs the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, the committee that deals with prison issues.
Fellow Omaha Sen. Terrell McKinney, also a member of the Judiciary Committee, also indicated that he was opposed to the new construction.
He, along with former State Sen. Steve Lathrop, have said that without reforms in criminal sentencing and development of alternatives to incarceration, the state will be saddled with building two new prisons — not one — at a total cost of more than $1 billion.
‘Overcrowded on Day 1’
“It will be overcrowded on Day 1,” McKinney tweeted Thursday, referring to a new prison.
Little discussion preceded the vote by the nine-member Appropriations Committee on Thursday (Sen. Steve Erdman was absent).
Elmwood Sen. Robert Clements, who chairs the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, said after the vote that it is time to build a replacement for the State Penitentiary in Lincoln, the state’s oldest and largest prison.
“It’s falling apart,” Clements said of the State Pen. “The cost of rehabilitating it is getting close to the cost of building a new prison.”
Space for rehab’
The senator added that a new prison would be designed to include space for rehabilitation programming, unlike the aging State Pen.
McKinney has been skeptical of the narrative by corrections officials that the State Pen must be replaced, saying that maintenance has been ignored at the prison — first opened in 1869 — which has led to some recent, well-publicized water main breaks there.
Meanwhile, Clements said there are criminal justice reforms he would support that could hold down the expected growth in state prison inmates and avoid construction of a second, pricey facility.
A master plan for state prison facilities, released earlier this year, projected that Nebraska would need 1,300 additional prison beds by the year 2030, which would be a couple of years after the planned new prison is opened.