Joint Performance Review (JPR)
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- October 2, 2026
Members if you'll take your seats we got this thing on how do we turn them on
if members if in the audience if you'll stand before our galin we're gonna have prayer led by Senator John Payton and the ask him to remember our friend and colleague senator Stubblefield's family Senatoreyton you're recognized ow with me please . Our Father in heaven God
Senator John Payton
Unverified
4:06
we love you and we thank you for this day you're an awesome go and you've definitely prepared the way before us for many generations and lord we just pray that you'd help us in this gatheringlord to look for your
guidance and your wisdom or do we think of our brother Gary Stubblefield and his family Lord seems like a very inconvenient time for his leaving but go your timing is perfect may we understand that what we do here today doesn't just impact those that are here today but those they'll be coming in the future as we'll all have an appointment like Gary to be called home Lord just pray that you give us your wisdom and guidance so that we make wise decisions
Lord I pray that you give us a attitude of harmony so that we can subdue our passions and address the things before us Lord and pray once again for Gary's family which by extension includes so many here Lord forgive us wifeelljie in Jesus' name.
Amen. Call to order the joint performance revieweittee appreciate everyone being here today
each and everyone welcome. I would ask that
we hold talking comments down where everyone be able to hear our first order of business is to prove the minutes from theoctober 21st24 meeting and take a motion motion that motion second all in favor I posed minutes are approved Next we consideration of the motion to authorize the chairs
to prove special expenses incurred by the JPR committee to take a motion have a motion have a second second all in favor I opposed that motion is approved a reason for a meeting today we have discussion on citizen's complaint regarding Franklin County prison proposal would just ask the presenters to come up
we are going to swear in all of our presenters today that's something not all committees can do we we do have that so if you'll come stand at the committee and I'll read you your oath just go ahead and get in front of your chair there and hit your microphone please. If you will state your your name
Speaker 39
6:54
and your position or employer adamwatson I'm a director withgravel on Grit. Natalie Cadina, executive director of gravel
Speaker 40
7:01
and Grit. if you will raise your right hand
and do you solemnly swear to affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I do do acknowledge both of you please
have your seat again thank you for being here
today and at this time we're going to turn it over to you for your present good afternoon chairs
Adam Watson
Unverified
7:40
and committee my name's adam Watson as I said my colleague here is Natalie Kadina before we get
Speaker 48
7:46
started I want to take just a minute to thank the chairs the vice chairs for agreeing to set this hearing and reviewing our
complaint and to thank all the committee members present for taking the time to be here and hear us out ever since the governor announced the Franklin County site almost a year ago we've consistently heard from lawmakers and state officials that citizens would have ample opportunity to be heard on this matter and unfortunately it just hasn't proven to be the case. so we're extremely grateful for both your time and attention here today it's also especially timely that we're here today in the wake of Senator Stubblefield's passing and we're honored to be able to
continue the conversation about an issue that was so vitally important to him so our thoughts are certainly with his family and his district as they grieve his loss and celebrate his life. Turning to our complaint in the in addition to the complaint itself we've provided the committee with an exhibit list a timeline 141 exhibits and a presentation that will be on all of your and we'll talk through that presentation as we present our
evidence since this is all pretty dense and voluminous. I want to go through just a couple of housekeeping items so we're all on the same page before we dive into the complaint itself if you will
slight your you're doing good slide that mic just a little bit closer to you is that
Speaker 48
9:15
better first we've been cautioned on more than one occasion which I think is exceedingly fair to be exceptionally careful about the veracity of what we present present to lawmakers anytime we have the chance to speak with you so the way we decided to present
our complaint as in the style of a summary judgment motion now kind of surprisingly to me at least I only count three attorneys on this committee so for those who aren't familiar what I mean by that is we don't intend to make any factual statements to you today that aren't supported by evidence so whether it's documentary evidence, prior testimony, photographs news reports etc. everything we share with you will be verifiable. Some of it's gonna be quick as we try and keep up with the presentation but assuming all this technology
cooperates with us the evidence supporting each statement we make will be displayed on the screens as we talk. if you're viewing the oh each each of those pieces of evidence will be labeled with an exhibit number on the screen and that exhibit number corresponds to the list we provided you if you're viewing that electronically each line item contains a link to the reference source material so it's easy to review. and what's looping on the screen now is an example of how to access that but we're more than happy to stick around if there are any
technical issues and a quick note on technical issues a couple of our videos are freezing up but the audio is fine so it's not you if something looks frozen second we want to address what we expect of the committee given its legislative purpose and limitations we fully understand that this committee is not a police forces style investigative unit that has either the leeway or the resources to launch a full scale quote unquote investigation into the matters we've complained about we filed this complaint because over the course of our research
and investigation into the matters we're complaining about we've been able to piece together facts that tell a story that indicates what we believe to be the extreme likelihood of impropriety and malfeasance. in a number of instances but the tools available to us as private citizens are limited by the foia lack of subpoena power and the general ease with which state officials can avoid us. so while we can tell you a good deal of the story here there are holes that we just can't fill in on our own. and that's where we're asking
the committee to come in. We strongly believe that what we know plainly constitutes smoke and we're asking the committee to determine whether or not there are associated fires. Lastly we hope to keep our presentation to around an hour including the time I've already taken but complaint for will be about as long as complaints 1 through3 combined and it's very dense so if the committee would like to take a break at any time that would be about the halfway mark for us and we'll remind the chairs when we get to that point
We see today as the first step of uncovering the truth in this matter. So depending on what you think about what you hear from us and the answers you get from the state officials in attendance we'd strongly encourage you not to consider this a closed matter after today's hearing. Whether you decide that further hearings are necessary that referrals to other investigative bodies are interim studies are appropriate that legislative audit needs to get involved or if you simply have additional questions or curiosities we want you to know that the line of communication both to us and to our officials
in Franklin County is always open. with that I'm going to turn it over to Natalie to get started on complaint one and then we'll go back and forth between the two of us
Speaker 54
12:50
as we progress through. to listen to our if you will pull your mic
Speaker 56
12:54
down and pull it a little closer to you how's that that's good thank you good
Speaker 54
12:59
morning and thank you for having us today so our first complaint is that it reads that it is improper for Arkansas taxpayers to be burdened with
supporting the salary of two leaders of the department of Corrections. on January10,2024, the Board of Corrections voted5 to2 to fire Correction Secretary Joe Prafiri. via special teleconferencing meeting governor Sanders immediately rehired him as her senior advisor then appointed Lindseay Wallace as the replacement secret of Corrections a few weeks later. Taxpayers fund both salaries so roughly 190,000 for both
a year and the media has well covered that there is no apparent role that Mr. Pofiri within the gov serves within the governor's office. However, documentation from the governor's office lists his role as the public affairs director. now by all appearances it seems Mr. Profiri's role hasn't changed one bit since his dismissal and immediate rehiring. internal emails reflect that months later agency heads still defer to Mr Pofiri's leadership for matters involving corrections.
Misterorfiri still testifies on behalf of the Department of Corrections standing in for Secretary Wallace when she's unable to answer questions regarding the new prison. why could
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
14:24
they answer the questions on Monday but they couldn't on Thursday Representative Woootten, I wish
Speaker 61
14:31
had a good answer for you with regards to what your questions
Corey Cox
Unverified
14:34
may have been to Secretary Wallace and her ability to answer those questions. I don't veneer the consultant allegedly
Speaker 54
14:45
running this project addresses deliverables to the attention of Joe Porfiri. in the prior committee hearing days earlier when Secretary Wallace was still trusted to represent the DOC, she repeatedly responded with some form of I don't know to committee members ue s s at the at a theme in her testimony that we and apparently some legislators have noticed all too frequently for a department head. I don't have the answers. I I can't tell
Speaker 68
15:13
you the specific checkx I don't know the answer
to that and just can't answer the question about how much the overall cost is going to be
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
15:25
at this point in time. we have here is a conundrum we don't know you don't know and apparently the
Speaker 72
15:36
governor doesn't know So OK there we go
Speaker 54
15:41
thank you we also think it's noteworthy that Secretary Wallace isn't even on this
hearing's agenda to represent the DOC. now as to Mr Pafiri's qualifications for either a department head or some kind of senior advisory role to the governor the governor brought Mr Pafiri to Arkansas out of a tumultuous run as the deputy director of arizona's Department of Corrections he was passed up for the directorship after playing or failing to play a role in events such as known but ignored prison lock malfunction leading to attacks on guards and inmates a
severely lackluster attempt at managing the covid situation in arizona's prison system and a botched software rollout so full of bugs that it led to hundreds of inmates being locked up beyond their release date which is eerily similar to the system problems at issue in Grant Harin's misclassification and recent escape from calicoRock's north central unit. Mister Pufffiri's personal friendships have also caused us to examine potential violations of Arkansas procurement law
On May16th of 2024, Vanier's executive director of justice emailed Director Laidlaw . Mr Profiri and several others about how excited Vanier was to work with the state and marking the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship. the only problem here as is that this is over a month prior to the state issuing therfQ which Vanier ultimately Venier was introduced to state officials by Mattate, the former
head of California's corrections agency and current consultant of whom Veneer is a client. he reached out for an informal discussion despite the political hurdles that needed to be overcome before formal planning could get started I guess it's who you know not what you know and apparently he's an old pal of Mr Porfiri. this is one of those instances where we clearly see smoke but since Mister Profiri has been elevated to the governor's staff, foia is no longer an
effective tool for us so we can't investigate without further assistance. Now since he appears to still helm the ship we thought it prudent to review his prison construction experience when asked about his experience bringing in prison projects under budget Mrrafiri responded as follows and a
Speaker 75
18:09
follow up thank you Mr chairir. Mr.orfiri, you said you built3 prisons under budget or within the budget it was given to
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
18:16
you that's correct sir what year was
Speaker 78
18:23
that? So the last prison that we built was in 2008.
Speaker 79
18:32
Now we're fine admitting that we aren't prison construction or construction man
Speaker 54
18:37
construction budget management experts but it doesn't appear that a criminal man in criminal investigations manager supervisor special investigator or correctional officer has anything to do with those responsibilities either as evidenced by Mrorfiri's resume
So while his resume may reflect experience in monitoring prison systems it does not reflect even a modicum of experience designing, planning or constructing prisons, notably neither does the flowery biography included with his appointment announcement. what we think is clear here is that we have an acting secret oforrection who is plainly incapable of fulfilling the role in a fired secret of Corrections who's still doing the job but with a reputation so bad from his previous job that Carlos Garcia, a 20 plus year
corrections professional said Joe was doing crazy things and allowing crazy things to go on. he's going to go to Arkansas and do the same thing it was the same garbage you guys are going to experience. Further in his de facto role and continued adversarial relationship with the board oforrections is exacerbating an already flawed secretive process that has led us here today. so who's really running the show? Is it the alleged senior advisor with a bad rap the standin secretary, the embattled boardard of
Corrections or the high dollar California contractor who points the finger back at the department of Corrections leadership while taxpayers foot their bills for booze and firstclass travel. Arkansas taxpayers are funding this incompetence inefficiency and potential illegality at a total clip of377,0 a year. with no clear leadership of a corrections department trying and failing to undertake the second most costly capital improvement project in the state's history. while we have a full
appreciation for the governor's purview to appoint her own staff this is clearly a trampling of the board oforrections oversight authority and a misuse of taxpayer funds. in addition to the list I handed out to you or you have we there are some questions that we think are raised by complaint
Speaker 48
21:02
based on Mrrafi or sorry complaint number two is it's an improper use of taxpayer funds to pay a consultant for a task while simultaneously having an unqualified state agency perform the same task based on Mister Porfiri's ALC testimony from November of 2023 that you're about to hear the site selection process for a carceral facility in the state began in earnest of late fall of 2023. You'll also hear him note that the vendor selected is responsible for both selecting the site and ensuring community
Corey Cox
Unverified
21:32
buyin. that the vendor who proposes to build the facility we'll have to inform us of the location and community by in with regards to where the prison will be located that process is underway we're hoping to issue an RfP
Speaker 86
21:49
sometime in the beginning of of the new year. Over the next several
Adam Watson
Unverified
21:59
months rather than a vendor, officials
from TSs which is another acronym now apologies for
Speaker 48
22:05
not updating that in conjunction in conjunction with DOC officials and governor's office staff work work to narrow down sites across the state that fit parameters however fuzzy developed by DOC. On July3,2024, an intern with GIs found an online listing for the property located at6310 Arkansas 215 in Charleston. that site was put under contract at the end of July of 2024
simmultaneously with the site selection process that was being undertaken by s state agencies on June 25,2024 DOC issued anrfQ for owners representative services for this project that RfQ specifically referenced the need for owners represent the owner's representative to quote assist in the project site selection. these services are also contemplated in the contract between Venier and DOc how well in advance of the contract even being finalized
site selection had already been completed. However inadequately by state agencies with no specialized construction workforce or prison experience on July22,2024, 3 full months before Venier's contract's execution, GIS director Shelby Johnson emailed his colleagues stating prison site selection done and as he saw a moment ago the property was under contract just three days later. It wasn't until october 14,2024 the aoc even reviewed the
contract and in response to citing questions at that meeting, Directorlaidlaw made false assertions to the committee both that the site had not yet been selected and that
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
23:49
that site selection curious is this proposed facility we have not selected a site yet so
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
23:57
we're still working on that in fact the owner's representative will help us with finalizing our options for the best site for the most
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
24:07
suitable for the facility can you tell us any place all over the state
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
24:14
of Arkansas is it any particular area of the state we have
looked at many many sites we're working with criteria for the facility which involves workforce numbers access to emergency services infrastructure there're and there's quite a bit of criteria workforce is a is a heavily driving criteria for the side as well so I guess I'm still trying to
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
24:38
see where it's limited to so could that be all over the state could be anywhere in the state or do you know some defined
Speaker 48
24:53
state yes ma'am. thank you representative the state closed on the Franklin County property3 weeks after that testimony. to summarize that's 22 days from finding the listing to site selection done and under contract re months prior to contracting with the firm intended to handle site
selection. there were multiple other sites considered for this project but unlike those sites the state did not put the Franklin County site under an option contract. in fact they had instructed their broker to put a Fortsmith property under an option just seven days prior to locating the Franklin County listing for the Franklin County site they didn't use a broker and simply entered into a regular purchase agreement hus not only did the state agency failures by both GIS and
DBA result in selection of an unfeasible property for the project. The improper contracting mechanism negates the state's reasoning for intentionally hiding the site selection from the public in other words there was no danger of a bidding war breaking out
Speaker 100
25:58
for a property under a purchase contract. and ultimately it was important for taxpayer to live with regards to ensuring that there wasn't an
escalation in the price and the bidding to work to like it the
Speaker 3
26:16
price of this property or the property wants wasn't buying it that night either considering the timing
Adam Watson
Unverified
26:26
of the owner's representative contract and the state's subsequent closing
Speaker 48
26:31
on the Franklin County property coupled with Director Johnson's email regarding the finality of site selection
months prior. it's plainly impossible that enier could have legally participated in any meaningful manner in the site selection process. this means that taxpayers have paid in duplicate for both veneer services which it could never have legally performed and the salaries of a litany of top level state agency staff for the months of time working through the site selection process. More importantly, by failing to let experts conduct this critical critical piece of research geared toward finding a property that is actually feasible for this type of
facility the state finds itself here today ive failed votes short of funding and all but begging for a design contract that is already slashed criteria to cut unnecessarily bloated costs rather than a design based on the state's needs and at serious odds with the very communitywi which it will be desperate which it will desperately need to patrol these cells. the substantial oversights have undoubtedly cost taxpayers far more than just duplicate
payments and the state is left having purchased a property that is plainly not suitable for the facility it intends to build. Here are a couple of the questions
Speaker 103
27:52
that we think are relevant to this section while Natalie gets ready
Speaker 54
28:07
for section3. So in complaint3 we ask is expending taxpayer taxpayer funds on a capital project without funding for such a
project is an irresponsible and improper as we sit here today the state has either spent committed to spend is or is on the cusp of asking the legislature to approve the spending of tens of millions of dollars on a project for which the legislature has repeatedly refused to even create an appropri Now to dispel some misinformation that was going around after session the legislature did not approve75 million specifically for this project a project which had not
yet even been thought up when the legislature appropriated that75 million in connection with the498 bed expansion of calico rock's north central unit. notably that appropriation was specifically for prison expansion, not new prison construction. semantics I guess we note this for two reasons one is to dispel any information indicating that there was even tacit approval for the current project by the current legislature and second to note that those figures place the
cost of that expansion at about $150,000 a bed while the math on3000 beds at 825 million is almost double at 275,000 a bed. and that's only if you believe the one page estimate ennier came up with over a three day weekend in March. Nonetheless appropriately or otherwise, the75 million that is currently being drawn from this project represents less than 10% of that estimate. we think DBA's minimum standards
are clear departments are responsible for ensuring they have sufficient appropriation and funding for the capital improvement project prior to the solicitation of bids. we also think Arkansas law is clear for projects of this state or any agency of this state amount appropriated means funds currently available for the project prior to the opening of any bids. common sense should also prevail here. How is plowing ahead with a project that lacks any
guarantee of funding and spending75 million dollars on paperwork, anything more than an attempt to box the legislature into a corner. we believe the intent here is clear because we've heard the argument before back in december of last year, Senator Gilmore told us in reference to the mere3 million dollars the state had already spent on the property that officials needed to be good stewards of taxpayer money and there is a very slim likelihood that we would look at any other land.
ostensibly indicating that once more once money is spent on a project that the project must move forward continuing with that logic is not difficult but it becomes all the more pressing and pressure inducing when it's75 million at stake instead of just3 million which the residents of Franklin County had offered to buy back the land. Pressure cooker aside spending75 million on an unfunded project puts us precariously close to repeating a mistake that South Dakota just made.
after dumping more than54 million dollars into the project South Dakota scrapped plans for their new 1500 bed $825 million prison strangely half the number of beds we expect at the same amount to get us South Dakota pivoted to a more inclusive and transparent process that prioritized community acceptance logistical feasibility and fiscal responsibility in selecting a more appropriate site for their project while of course we would like to see Arkansas do the same the
taxpayers would certainly like to see the state have the forethought to do so before we're75 million dollars in the hole. Overspending is overspending but we think it's especially egregious when there has been so much disinformation spread about the true budget for this project in a span of just four days this past spring, the project costs ballooned to almost double what the executive branch had been selling the public and the legislature for almost two years. not only did the470 million dollars prove to be
dollars proved to be false but DBA had explicitly told the governor's office in writing as early as December of 23. that budget would not deliver3,000 beds. ha p s even more troubling, Senator Hester noted that the cost for a3,000 bed would be750 million dollars in 2022 before Governor Sanders even took office. what numbers are we talking
Speaker 108
32:49
about when we say we need those 1000 beds so we can
Speaker 109
32:56
alleviate the responsibility from our local sheriff's departments think the Department
Speaker 111
33:00
oforrections is saying maybe 1000 beds. I think that
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
33:03
the the information that I'm getting saying we might need up to3,000 or3,500 beds but a3,0 uh3000 bed prison would cost us about750 million dollars. coupled with
Speaker 54
33:15
the fact that Wdd's initial programme study returned an estimated cost of $1.2 billion in late summer of 2023 we don't believe there's any
possibility that the470 million was ever a reasonable budget for this project especially not as the selected site conveniently when instructed to go back to the drawing board, Wdd was somehow able to shave730 million off the estimate to match the governor's announcement so it's no surprise that we're again shaving down the design to match the alleged budget instead of constructing the most appropriate type of facility for the state's needs. this is all exceedingly troublesome given that the
governor's initial letter to the JBC requested only a330 million dollar appropriation which like the current75 million would leave the project woefully short of full funding. meaning the legislature and the public were sold the budget the state should have well known was insufficient until the legislature balked then the estimate raised by76% in four days. The pattern seems clear under budget to secure funding in order to force the legislature's
hand when it comes to approve approval of the remaining funds that will actually be needed to finish this project. with senator hester's750 million estimate the $1.2 billion estimate from WdddBA's insistence that470 million wouldn't cut it and the widespread speculation that this is really a $1.5 billion project this behavior causes grave concerns that we would remain in this cycle of underfunding leading to manufactured legislative pressure even had
the legislature approved the governor's appropriation request in session. ga in overspending is overspending regardless of the amount and it's bad enough for the state in its own right but what really deserves examination here is the process if we have an executive engaging in a concerted effort to strong arm the legislature into funding capital projects the veracity of and motive behind every statement from the executive in connection with such a project should be called into question and carefully examined.
and as our to our complaint that starts with the funds already expended prior to the legislative approval. Here are some questions relevant to this section and before I pass it to adam for the last section of our presentation this is a reminder that if you want to take a break this would be the halfway point right section4 and it's
Speaker 48
35:54
dense we try to do our best with keeping visuals on the screen for y'all to follow along but
apologies in advance so failing to conduct property diligence on real property prior to its purchase is irresponsible and improper so I want to start by acknowledging that yes we've seen the47 page site assessment prepared by GIS and offered as exhibit D2 to this hearing. we've also presented it as complainants exhibit A and that's how we're referring to it in our presentation just for clarity we contend that the information we're presenting to you in this section clearly indicates that pulling data on a parcel of real property does not constitute the
extent of prepurchaseed due diligence required as stewards of taxpayer dollars to determine whether such parcel is feasible for any particular project, especially not for the second most costly capital improvement project in state history if it did we wouldn't be sitting here today with some of the most basic fundamental questions about this project unanswered. or se yet, not only was proper due diligence not conducted but the state's internally created an ever shifting criteria or ultimately watered down to the
point that they might as well have been abandoned altogether in the final site selection. so let's start by looking a little bit at that criteria. first and foremost the state's criteria for the prison was a moving target throughout the search process so we're gonna walk through those and chart them before we get into the specifics of the Franklin countunty site and how it matches up. the earliest version of the criteria we can find and therefore the most inconsistent with the state's ultimate site selection is back to Mr
Porfiri's testimony in front of ALc on November 17 with respect to the prison construction in
Corey Cox
Unverified
37:40
those3,000 beds arkansas history of prison construction has been through the use of donated land often donated land within the state of Arkansas to build prisons is not at a premium it costs a lot to improve that land to make it suitable for an infrastructure to go on top of itdditionally it's not in the most right location to allow for a workforce that can
immediately staff that prison as well as sus a sustainable workforce that can maintain the facility over the long haul as far as having appropriate staffing levels so I'm deviating from that past behavior as the status quo I do not believe has served the state of Arkansas well with regards to the locations of prisons in the state of Arkansas I have specific criteria associated with where that prison should be constructed and it has to do with like I said a sustainable workforce it's got to be within a certain proximity to a level
three trauma center I have to ensure quality work life for those employees that work at that facility which means that the commute has to be reasonable from their homes and that it has to be close to highways and the land has to be suitable for construction of such a facility in addition community has to embrace the fact that a prison would go into their community or near their community so all those factors will be associated and written into the procurement action that the vendor who proposes to build
the facility we'll have to inform us of the location and community by in with regards to where the prison will be located that process is underway we're hoping to issue an RfP sometime in the
Speaker 86
39:21
beginning of of the new year. so we'll go ahead and chart those out and
Speaker 48
39:28
next we have criteria outlined in December of 2023 by directorlaidlaw with additions from Mr Cooper with DOC.
and those will be on the chart so we don't have to spend a lot of time on the email we'll put them on there the next set comes from a DBA presentation in January of 2024 which largely mirrors Mr Cooper's list from December with the addition of a county population requirement and a workforce formula provided by a consulting workforce expert. but those on the chart next which this is the last version documented prior to the site purchase in March of 2024 we see another DBA presentation
that changes the approach a bit rather than laying out specific criteria it notes that quote sites are evaluated according to how they meet criteria overall rather than any single factor alone.'ll put that on the chart and lastly we see the primary search criteria accompanying the DOC site assessment thatrectorjoson emailed to the BOC just the evening before their vote to accept the Franklin County property. these criteria notably omit any specific information.stead
opting for language such as quote availability of primary infrastructure and quote proximity to emergency services but we'll go ahead and chart out what we can so let's briefly ignore which criteria the Franklin County property does and doesn't meet and just look at the moving goalposts The Franklin County property was first identified via an online listing by GIS on July3,2024. for the 20 months prior real tangible and quantifiable
criteria existed for the location of the proposed prison. as you can see by this comparison not only did the final postpurchase criteria becomes so amorphous that just about any large tract of land would have sufficed but critical elements such as distance to an interstate, cost of infrastructure improvements and most importantly community acceptance were completely omitted Now Secretary Wallace maintains that the state did everything it was able to prior to purchasing the property.
Speaker 67
41:43
what I do do understand to be factual is that everything that we could do before we purchase the
Speaker 121
41:49
land was done in terms of checking things out. the
Speaker 48
41:55
purchase agreement for the property prohibits any study the state would have wished to conduct during the due diligence period. they even went so far as to extend the standard 90 dayy due diligence period through the day before closing Secretary Wallace's position is proven false by the state's own
actions in beginning to conduct the very studies it should have and could have conducted before purchase six months after the fact. and our point is essentially proven by this admission that reports being delivered on June 25,2025, almost eight months after the close of the due diligence period constitute necessary due diligence. the bottom line here is this watering down your site criteria to fit the parcel of land that you want to purchase is the
opposite of due diligence it's setting the DOC up for failure and that's before we even address the shortcomings of the ranklincaranklin County property when compared to the final site criteria which we'll start going through now so out of these six different versions of property criteria over a year plus period. let's try to walk through these with the focus on the versions of the criteria that are both quantifiable and make the most realistic sense as they relate to the needs of an adequate site
for a mega prison. we'll check off the first two in the state's favor. We don't need to waste time here it's not within60 miles of an existing DOC facility and it's not in a floodplain. so the next is urban versus rural while the site is not within city limits which meets directorlaidlaw's early draft criteria, we would tend to agree with the DBA presentation from March 1st,2024 that many rural locations including this one are completely ruled out both based
on lack of infrastructure which will cover in more detail down the list as further support for that opinion we would refer to the Texas sunset advisory Commission's report Re recommendations that TdCJ develop a plan to close its rural facilities that can't be staffed. so for us this category gets an x. workforce and this one is dense there's some math so apologies again we think each of the criteria laid out in this category is pretty important but we're going
to start with an easy one a county with30,000plus population. Franklin County has 17,097 people so that crosses that off the list Next and probably more important is a location that's immediately and sustainably staffable, taking into account the quality of worklife balance to employees. so let's take a look at the workforce formula thatrector Johnson received in response to his reaching out to a workforce expert with questions about how to evaluate potential sites
that formula is explained on screen but we have to modify a couple things to fit this site. first the expert here is relying on manufacturing as the recruiting base for her 20% participation rate. so we need to adjust that to fit this project The Bureau of Labur statistics lists correctional officers and jailers as as accounting for 2% of the workforce and all protective service occupations is 2.2%. if we're exceedingly generous, disregard the lower
participation security positions and anticipate that our current environment doubles actual labor participation in the entire industry we can just round up and use a5% participation rate. then to compare apples to apples we need to remove the experts50% reduction in population to calculate labor force because the state's comparison numbers are all ready to total labor force as opposed to total population. so what that means is the total
labor force needed is the number of positions to be filled times the number of candidates you need per position divided by the participation rate in the industry. the appropriate formula for evaluating the site per the state's expert can be noted mathematically as you see on the screen so when we plug in the variables that we know to staff this prison and look at the experts criteria her optimum scenario allows
for50 candidates per position looking to be filled when you run the math that gives us a required labor force of 800,000 Her minimally acceptable scenario was 25 candidates per position That returns a needed labor force of400,000 The entire labor force and the entire five county areas surrounding the Franklin County site is 108,784 based on the state's own side assessment, the labor force
is short over 291,000 workers for the experts minimally acceptable criteria and that would be far worse if we were looking at just the30 mile drive shed where the math gets even more telling it's scoring the reality of the site's regional labor force against the experts scoring scale. for this we have to do a little bit of algebra and change the equation to solve for candidates per position we do that by multiplying our participation rate by the labor force available then dividing by
the number of positions needing to be filled and mathematically that looks like this again when we plug in our known quantities 679 candidates per position as our result. and if you check the expert scoring scale above it only awards candidates scores down to 25 candidates per position the site scores a0 out of 10 Look it took us a while to work out all that math and apparently it was hard for director Johnson
too which totally makes sense to us Again we dispute that GIS should have ever been doing this kind of evaluation in the first place but it's clear that even when getting an expert's position on the site score in expert's opinion that the site score is bottomed out for workforce the state promptly ignored the data all of that math doesn't even address the inherent conflict in the state's assessment data on the left we see a depiction of the 30 mile drive shed
surrounding the site reflecting a labor force of which is 18 plus population of 127,395 while the entire regional workforce map on the right shows a labor force of only 108,784 because the entire drive shed falls within the region but doesn't encompass the entire region. it's plainly impossible for the drive shed to have a larger labor force than the region as a whole notably though, even with the inflated figure lifted listed on the drivesh shed map, the
expert's formulas still returns the same results. The site ranks as0 out of 10 that's right there and look we've we've already heard the talk about reducing the number of beds at this facility from3,000 to1000 to save face so for clarity the math still results in a0 out of 10 these are the kinds of massive shortcomings that neither a pay bump or a new bridge are going
to solve. However you want to slice it, the workforce category gets an xx for this location. so services has a lot of different categories on it so we're gonna walk through a couple of them and they're we're not going to talk about landfills but proximity to a trauma center distance from hospital. those things are important for for a prison so hospitals as the site assessment shows the site is indeed 19 miles to the nearest hospital which is just within the 25 mile criteria it also correctly reflects that
the closest level3 trauma center is Mercyortsmith which clocks in at 27 miles or38 minute drive. we can't definitively say whether that fits into Mister Porfiri's criteria of quote within a certain proximity but it sure seems prudent to us to be closer than the better part of an hour drive from a trauma center when you're running a prison. Here the site assessment clearly has the data so we don't know and can't say whether the state considered it just good enough or didn't consider it at all
fire departments this is an area where a GIS assessment just doesn't present the full story of the reality of the site what's left off of the fire department's name on this map other than by acronym is that each and every one of these are volunteer staffed and all but one is specifically designated as a rural fire department. what that means is that they're mostly intended for hay baer and brushfires and they look like this
This is the nearest one to the site. and look we're not disparaging our firefighters we love them but neither of the two gentlemen that work at this facility are going to put a dent in a prison fire. all of that routing analysis also omits that that all of these fire stations would be solely reliant on transported water given that the nearest fire hydrant is6.8 miles away and that is a lot of hose to unroll.
law enforcement so I don't have this is one of those that I don't have documentation to back back it up so you're welcome to take my word for it or ignore me. but one of the points specifically consistently brought up by our community is that Charleston is a quiet peaceful town. even it's motto is where serenity prevails and we don't have police patrols in the city past midnight. more importantly in quantifiably for both county and local law enforcement services the state
admitted in the town hall that the prison will cannibalize local law
Speaker 126
52:18
enforcement for at least several years before it
Speaker 2
52:23
levels out similar to what we have here they're also and it did not affect the say after a kids but after several years
Speaker 48
52:43
the site is also on the wrong side of the river from the sheriff's office. Bottom line between distances law enforcement cannibalization by the prison and an and already existing critical workforce issues that we just discussed. your response times are going to be less than ideal to say the least. all in all it doesn't appear that any single one of these categories sufficiently meets the desired criteria and certainly when taken as a whole the property fails the task of
the services criteria category and we're giving it an xx. interstate access so what you're seeing on the screen is a video of the drive from the nearest interstate exit which is I-40 and Ozark to the proposed site this video is at 10x speed. You won't see a shoulder a passing lane or a pitt stop past Ozark for that whole video. while you watch that let's take a look at the criteria.
pretty uniformly easy access to I-40 is noted. and that's further quantified as within two miles of the interstate. this site is 23.3 miles from that exit at its nearest point. that means for any potential employee usingi-40 to communi to commute to a job here that's a34 minute drive after they exit the interstate. it doesn't exactly factor in well to that work life balance that Mister Porfiri discussed back in 2023. see how far we are
so we're not even halfway there yet and remember this is 10 times speed so anecdotes aside the site is over 10 times the existences desired from the interstate and clearly fails this category will add an xx when we get there I guess. we don't have to watch the whole thing but it's beautiful country. this is what I couldn't show you in the beginning and in the middle of the video it's the map showing34 minutes and 23.3 miles from the interstate.
so for we're going to give that an xx I think pretty clearly infrastructure is the the next category on our criteria list and the first of that is wastewater so on site wastewater treatment facilities are nothing new to prisons in this state. however no evaluation has been made for the cost escalation for the construction of a treatment facility versus a site with public sewer available. likewise, no prepurchase considerations were made for the potential environmental impact
for neighboring properties Onion Creek flows through and they're expo their potential exposure to the prison's discharge which the site assessment at least puts a number on at 127 properties moreover, despite warnings that clean Wa Act issues were identified on the property. the state failed to conduct a404 wetland act designation evaluation until6 months after it purchased the property. and we've seen no evidence of
even a plan to conduct an environmental impact study so despite quote wastewater treatment feasible being one of the few items included in the final search criteria. the official site assessment omits any relevant information about such feasibility. le c tri c ity 8 to10,000 amps as a massive amount of power. which makes sense.3,800 people on the side of a mountain is effectively a bigger city than exists in any direction for miles around.
Similarly, the state the the state side assessment fails to meaningfully address this category possibly because the final search criteria doesn't list 8 to10,000 amps with two sources it simply lists electricity available. what the site assessment does show is that there are not two sources available there's one transmission line owned by Og&E and services provided by Arkansas Valley Electric. It also notes that residential services specified meaning that this isn't dual or three phase power
running through beefed up and backed up substations. This is rural residential basic power. what it does reflect is the depiction of a high voltage line bisecting the property. Thankfully somebody at the state has realized that they can't build under those lines and has inquired with OG&E about simply moving them. I guess that's an easy thing to do. I'm not sure but this wasn't until three months after the purchase and it comes at an unknown cost even
though these easements were readily available and constitute tidal encumbrances that are a basic facet of any pre pre closing title commitment review process. hodes curiously we don't see road criteria referenced outside of kind of cursory references to needing paved hiway highways but we're including it here one because it's included on the site assessment and two because it's something that's critical to consider for any massive
scale construction project which ultimately will have hundreds of entries and exits every single day in the site assessment we see a few of the highways in the area along with average daily traffic counts as of 2019. so five year old data seems a bit outdated to us but since this really isn't telling us anything other than existing traffic counts. I'm not sure that really matters much. What's much more important than tra current traffic counts are future anticipated ones coupled with both the quality and integrity of the highways and potential need for improvement.
though on March 20,2025, we heard Mr Porfiri testify in front of the joint budgetgetittee that quote the roadways there are no different than the roadways anywhere in the
Corey Cox
Unverified
58:43
state. roadways my understanding of roadways are the roadways there are no different than the roadways anywhere in the state they're built to a specific standard and there's load that is going to be necessary to construct this facility with this those roadways those road roadways are
no different than any roadway to any facility that we currently have
Speaker 48
59:10
in the Ra ther coincidentally at the very same time Mr Porfiri was testifying.arddo was drafting an email regarding the major upgrades needed to the roadways prior to construction and its associated traffic And they note a minimum cost of500,000 dollars a mile for those improvements. Clearly all roads in Arkansas are not the same and clearly
judging from the conflicting information given five months after purchasing the property, the state did not fully evaluate the roads or the anticipated impact on the roads or the cost of the cost implications of needing improvements to them. Subtopically the roads bridges are one of the most glaring examples of why simply pulling map data does not constitute proper due diligence. on the site assessment you see a total of two weight restricted posted bridges mapped and no other bridges in the area.
and that's 100% accurate straight fromardott's records. However, what you don't see is that ardott defines a bridge and therefore only maintains records on quote bridges that are over 20 ft in length. Now because ardot doesn't maintain the data we found it for ourselves again we'd love for you to take our words for it but if you want to come out and count we'll follow along with you. Based on our accounts there are 259 either short bridges or culverts less than 20 ft along
the highways depicted in this map. and they have noardot records or inspections associated for public access. If I were a betting man , I'd wager that our county judge has some thoughts on the quantity and size of loads that are going to be traversing these crossings so to the elephant in the room water look I think everybody here has read the news and the reports on water so we're not going to belabor the point but we do want to make sure we're briefly all on the same page.
the state side assessment merely includes a water line map and for reasons that are unclear to us some pictures of a water towers which would be insufficient to service the prison for even a single day. again relying on map data and a barely cursory email from 8Dh showing3 million gallons of excess capacity in Ozark's water system. The state checked the minuscule criteria of water available off of its list I don't think I need to explain in great detail that you can
have a billion gallons of excess capacity if you don't have access to the ability to treat or a mechanism to deliver a billion gallons, you might as well have nothing. so here we sit, Fortsmith is a no go. We all know the50,000 dollarsest wells didn't pan out which state water experts find even the prospect of doubtful the well experts say deeper isn't better and there hasn't even been chatter of a hydrogeologic study to protect the scant water that the neighbors actually can access
and no one's even bothered to call Ozark who by the way has publicly stated that they can't do it and don't support it. olks our neighbors have been screaming at the top tops of their lungs that there's no water on that mountain since they first heard the governor's announcement over KaDYN's airwaves last Halloween. even if by some miracle the water situation were to sort itself out tomorrow, the current set of circumstances bears out the heart of this complaint. The
state did not do its homework. this is even more telling as the amount of water needed is a known quantity and there's no lack of57 million dollars design contract to hide behind or at least there shouldn't be and if the murmurs we're hearing are true it boggles our minds that the remedy sought by our conservative state government for its own lack of due diligence could be turning to federal welfare for a bailout.
the site fails this criteria categorically and objectively cannot be the best place in the state to attempt to build this facility so it gets an xxx those were a couple dense ones so the next are more straightforward and apologies for getting into the weeds but I think it was necessary on a couple of those points so size and topography is next for size over somewhere between76 and300 acres. Chet that's easy topography relatively flat which
I don't know seems important when you're building something that folks like to try to escape if anyone knows anything about contour lines and maps that's not flat. relatively or otherwise so I guess since these are kind of combined criteria we'll we'll do a check and an x and give it a half point. local super easy here don't even have a slide for you. Franklin County is not any of those preferred locations so that's an xxx
soil reports so this item is listed on as critical a critical criteria and has information pulled from USDA data on the site assessment . However just a little bit of experience with industrial real estate and forms our assumption that the intent and useful preliminary report here is a geotechnical report again a true feasibility study would have revealed this and conducted the appropriate test immediately as evidenced by the fact that the state did eventually conduct this testing
six months after it purchased the property. while the official pre preliminary geotechnical itself is itself preliminary and its introduction notes that a final geotechnical investigation and report should be conducted Venier's cover letter does note that quote some mitigation measures are expected and will have cost implications. so here again the documents prove our point stopping the site site search and purchasing
a property without full investigation escalates cost. and without evaluating this site against more appropriate ones the state will never know how much more it has to spend simply by virtue of its poor site selection so for us this gets an x but we understand it's kind of amorphous and we made an assumption so we're going to be just lenient and give it a check. community acceptance so if you've been following the list which I know is is tough with how much we're covering you've already noticed we skipped one
really we just went out of order because he wants to end with soil studies I guess look in no uncertain terms Mister Porfiri testifies to aoc
Corey Cox
Unverified
1:06:05
that community acceptance is a must for this type of facility to embrace the fact that procurement action that the vendor who proposes to build the facility we'll have to inform
us of the location and community by in with regards to where the prison will be
Speaker 48
1:06:36
located. then it's never spoken of again. just a few weeks ago our senate president pro tem gave an interview where he stated that not only is the reality that a majority of the people in our community accepting and supportive of this prison but that the ones who aren't want to see violent criminals walking our streets.
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
1:06:54
a majority of the people in that area are for this prison
there are a few that that oppose it look there's always a few people they oppose
Speaker 48
1:07:08
prisons they want violent criminals walking the street. ladies and gentlemen my community has absolutely been put through the wringer with the level of dismissal disrespect and denigration shown to it by the state throughout this process and I cannot emphasize enough how patently false that statement is.
the best evidence I can give to you of this is the fact that city councils for every municipality surrounding the Franklin County site and the Franranklin County Qorum Court have signed resolutions opposing this And this is what the streets and our small towns have looked like since last november. in small towns and rural communities in Arkansas we still understand that the best way to gather information or opinions on something it's just to get
folks in the same room and have a conversation with them. s te ad the state chose to cut us out of the process and ignore this vital requirement to the project's success. in case you haven't had a look behind me a few of our friends and neighbors have joined us for this hearing so if you have any doubts whatsoever about the level of community acceptance for this project each and every one of them would be more than happy to discuss it with you offline at any time. for us this gets the biggest xxx out of all of these.
so we're done with going through those we can score it. that comes out to4.5 generously of the 12 categories that this site satisfies and none of the critical categories. that doesn't paint a pretty picture, especially if we're concerned as Mister Porfiry was about the sheer increase in cost and time required to force this poorly selected site so poorly selected that even Director Laidlaw twice emailed
colleagues noting that the site was not viable just days before director Johnson's email that site selection was complete. so if you find any assertion that the state conducted proper due diligence is true, then it must follow that they have consistently ignored the facts that any such due diligence uncovered while we can't make motivations we can't make assumptions about their motivations we can review the facts of the matter and the
facts clearly demonstrate that despite the rampant insistence to the contrary. this site is by no means the best site in the state for a new prison. it's less than well eclipped. it's less than ill equipped for a prison facility and it presents a myriad of out of the ordinary barriers to building a new large scale prison. the state is arguing that somehow it doesn't know what the design for the project is and that it cannot determine answers to feasibility related questions until this legislature approves
a57 million dollars design contract but it does know that this is the best property in the state for that project. these are plainly mutually exclusive ideas and Mister Porfiri said as much back in 2023 when the plan was to go about this project the proper way and bring in a design professional before site selection to secure community acceptance in contrast this project has been done backward from the start the state selected the site, then hired an owner's rep and
now seeks legislative approval to spend57 million dollars to retroactively rubber stamp its bad decisions. at the end of the day the work the state did just doesn't meet the high bar of due diligence. The information it gathered doesn't indicate site suitability for the project and nothing done to date constitutes a feasibility study. p end ing nearly nearly3 million dollars of taxpayer monies without checking these boxes is a misuse of taxpayer funds.
alleging that we need to spend57 million more to check these boxes is reckless. and the consequence is more than wasted dollars. it's the loss of credibility, time and trust at the very moment when these same state leaders claimed they were doing all of this to solve a pressing crisis. So for the last time there's a couple of questions on your screen that we think are relevant to this section of the complaint that's all I have for this section but before I pass
it back to Natalie for just a couple clues and comments just for me I'd like to thank the chairs and the committee again for your time and attention and the opportunity to be here and present all this to you today. us h your microphone please is that better
Speaker 54
1:11:56
OK I hope what we've shown you here today solidifies the fact that we aren't here as obstructionists in the way of progress. we aren't bringing you
purely nimby arguments because we're upset about having our way of life fundamentally altered and we can we certainly aren't here because we somehow want to see dangerous criminals walking the streets. we're here because any process that leaves a government in this kind of direct and consistent conflict with its citizens. some of its most supportive citizens no less deserves to be examined and corrected for future iterations. from our perspective this project has been the perfect
storm of lack of transparency, executive overreach, incompetence and dishonesty. we believe we've shown you ample evidence of all of four categories of behavior in today's presentation. while we were preparing for today's hearing in a moment of sheer exasperation at the monumental task of condensing our research into a reasonable presentation I commented to adam that we could have another month to prepare and a full day to present and we still couldn't
cover everything in the story. Similarly, a journalist who came and spent a week with us in Franklin County to cover the story remarked at the end of her trip that should one choose to do so an investigative journalist could make an entire career out of just this project. what we've shown you today is a fraction of what we've uncovered and all of this is just from some Google searches and foyer requests. Arkansas deserves the full story. they deserve honesty,
transparency and accountability from their government and if nothing else is clear today what has become blindingly obvious over the last year is that they aren't going to get any of that without your help. We both know this was a lot of information so we want to again thank you for conducting this hearing and for your time and willingness to listen we're happy to take any questions you might have either now or at any point in the future thank you. thank you I will take
questions today as as thank you
if if y'all will again I I understand the passion I understand good presentation but we're we'll refrain from those things I will
take questions from committee and noncommittee members we will also monitor time and try to be as fair with that as we can so first up
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
1:14:45
Senator King you're recognized Thank you Mr chairir I want to let you know that the water I provided there on the table
for you to make sure know what these long presentations can be in the water I just want everybody to know that Bryan King is on record as providing more drinking water there than they found at the Franklin County site for3,800 people so you knowenator Stubfield and I had tons of conversations about this we had a lot of conversations
about cattle you know we talked about the water, you know and people look at the nimby lie that is at been out there that has continued to be told you know we looked at a cattle if we're putting a3800head feedlot out there before we purchase the property we would have done due diligence and made 1,000% sure that that was there or at least at the very least purchase the property with contingency basis that you would find it you know you talked about 96. I mean I've drove that several times you know what you didn't see in
that video folks is there's grass growing up in that highway I mean there's literally the whole thing will have to be con pretty resurfaced the other thing is too you know with what senator hester's comments about you just want to dangerous people I've been in politics long enough. if you're right on the facts and the truth, the best thing your critics are going to do go to it in politics shame today is lie about your position. Franklin County, all my counties passed jail taxes. they have made commitments to lock up better people. So I just
am proud of you guys for number one doing more research than what Joe Porfiri did on trying to find the right site location and not dispel this thing of just being a nimby and I don't want it in
my area so thank you very much for doing your presentation. happy to hear you
Speaker 117
1:16:36
have be here and thank you for listening to it
Chair
Unverified
1:16:41
uhpresentative Bryn you recognized thank you Mr chair
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:16:47
at some point in your presentation towards the beginning you you made some statements about the75 million dollars that was appropriated for the calico rockck expansion back in 2022 and then you followed up with I think the quote was funds were expended prior to legislative approval or otherwise kind of insinuated there was some misspending of that money. my understanding was was that Act 151 of2023 that money was reappropriated back to Department of Corrections for capital improvement projects so are you saying that that law did not reappropriate that money back or I don't understand the the no
Speaker 117
1:17:17
what we're mainly saying is that spending75 million dollars on a project where the budget is $825 million
Speaker 48
1:17:23
is inappropriate. I just thought it was notable that that money was initially specifically appropriated for s prison expansion not new prison construction follow up Mr Chair but it'd be fair to say that the money was reappropriated after there was the
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:17:38
fight on prison expansion is that not correct and specifically I think I recall that the governor's office wanted to go ahead and expand some of the prisons we've got beds at prisons we have and
the department oforrections pretty much shot that down and then got into a lawsuit and at that point it was then proposed to build a new prison is that right?
Speaker 48
1:17:55
Yeah and I think that depends on your you know your thoughts on what the best solution for the problem that we're having is which you know we're not really here to address today but the way it's been handled for this specific project we're alleging is inappropriate follow it Mr Chair but isn't that exactly what we're here today is to solve this
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:18:12
problem I mean at at the end of your presentation you made a statement one of y'all made a statement something to the effect of like
this supposed crisis. I mean are we not in a crisis when it comes to our prisons in the state I served on a quorum court
Speaker 157
1:18:25
before I came to the legislature and we couldn't put people in our county jail for misdemeanors because it was full of state inmates we now have state inmates that are getting released under EPA I mean these are I'm sorry but they really are violent criminals in fact to get ready for today's hearing I went and looked at the EPA reports for 2022 and they last had to do a round of releases and I picked a name at random. I just literally picked a name at random out of the list and it was a guy that had been arrested
and sentenced to 20 years for raping a 15 year old and he was out in like3.5 years under EPA I think we do have a crisis and we got to do something about it is that not the purpose that we're here today whether it's building a new prison here, there or somewhere
Speaker 48
1:19:06
else we got to have space for these people . I think the purpose of this committee is to address the complaint that we filed and the crisis the decades of underfunding that's led to the crisis all of the situations surrounding that aren't really at play today. what's at play
today is the improper way the state has gone about this specific capital improvement. enter dismang you re thank you
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:19:35
Mr Chairman ok to that end because I've been a little bit curious myself I mean
and it may be specifically directed towards you or the other chairman or whoever about what is what are we looking at for an outcome today I mean is there some action that you think that we're going to be taking or
but because they clearly believe there should be an action taken that was what was just stated what is the perception
of the leadership of the committee I will give you my perception as the chair of JPR and and our cochair and I both agreed to have the meeting one was we we don't have meetings for every citizen request not every citizen's request has this many people involved not
every citizen request has had this much media not every citizen request it probably has had as much factual information and it may cut both ways I'm trying to do the responsibility of the chair as far the outcome my my reason for having this committee is for transparency that's been stated and I hope that is also felt the
same way from the state's point of view because I'm again they have their own packet and they'll be able to speak too but is to give an air of transparency and the air that this thing can be covered in a fair way as far as whether it will change anything I don't have a predetermined mindset I'll let my co-chair speak if you'd like to. ir dismayne I I agree wholly with what Senator
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
1:21:27
Rice said. I I know we have to eventually sometimes let our citizens groups when it's such a large item and such a big request to come and present what comes out of this meeting is up to the group that sits behind them over here you know if we want to carry this city further that would go through here or if they want to carry any further they'll go to where they have to but I think we're hearing it let you guys hear it make your decisions if you want to do anything about it or not that would be my
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:22:00
So I mean just to be clear I'm I'm great with the trans transparency and great with the discussion I mean is there expectation that there's going to be some kind of vote for some type of action or you're both saying that that is to be determined because I'm just trying to understand what my role is as a committee member for what it is we're doing aside from listening which I am very happy to do I mean if somebody some of the committee wants
to make a motion to vote on something's fine but my goal is here today is is take
this and determine if there's more information needing again it's been stated and I think the other side finally came to maybe the term of investigation is not the same as it is for some terms of investigation we have our limitations but there are things within state government we can check on if we feel like there's something needs to be done we can do that if not we'll determine by taking in the information today and decide if if we want to discuss any anymore
hope that answers your question I do not see anyone else on the board for these if not thank you for your presentation and we'll move on with the agenda. thank youext up we have Joe Perfury at senior advisor office of the governor of Arkansas is Mr if you're here
And I will clarify with staff on I asked earlier did you ever hear anything
OK, I'm gonna go next we may come back to that next I'll go to Anne Laidlaw director diffusion of building
authority department of shareddministration Services this laidlaw will come up
Also we have Shelby Johnson, director of division of geographic Information Systems and SAs Welcome if you turn your microphones on and I'll give you the oath you'll stand
and raise your right hand you saw me swear go ahead and state your name first please.
shelby Johnson do you saw me swear or affirm that the testimony you're about
Speaker 38
1:24:36
to give will be the thank you appreciate y'all being here and I will open it
up you've heard the citizen's complaint uh'll let you go wherever you need to and then we'll open up for questions Happy to answer your question sir M Johnson you the same yes sir
all right members questions for Misslaidlaw or Mr Johnson got center icky Hill over here I guess
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
1:25:17
I'd just like a response from you for the information
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:25:22
that they provided where they used your name on it a while ago from the emails all the way through I
want to hear your opinion on what you think about the information that they that they provided were they accurate? were they not just kind of over overall
aspect we're giving you a chance or I'm asking you to rebute or agree with what they said thank
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:25:48
you for the opportunity yes sir Oviously there were a lot of written communications a lot
of other conversations that we had so I think what you've seen are excerpts from a lot of that you're not seeing the full explanation or comments in many cases and I think that's something we have to keep in mind is that information's been pulled out that they wanted to share other information was available that was not shared certainly the
statement about my visiting the site I did jump out ahead on the ourth of July weekend and told my husband let's go take a road trip. I want to go to Franklin County and he goes well I don't understand and I said, well we're gonna go and I made that trip to Franklin County. I did come in through highway 96 which as the video shows and many of the that you all are familiar is not the best highway so my comments that I returned with on that following Monday where I have concerns about the access
to the property. so the team, the rest of the team went out and they looked at it but they came in a different way, a different highway which was far better that does carry better traffic and also went into the Fortsmith area which is the main artery that will provide workforce for the site so my assessment was a quick one I did on my own not taking into consideration all the roadways and arteries that are available to the site and so I made a statement but they were able to come back and show me that there was a there were many
other ways to access the property which I agreed I did not do a thorough site visit the first time I went out our our team worked very closely with geographic information and the wonderful resources and the knowledge that they have to go in and to access their the data they have access to that my office does not we also did extensive communications and conversations with other state officials other
state offices that are tremendous resources for our state to do further research on the site so yes we did do extensive work. My notebook is proof that there was a lot of work that was that was done but I did not do that with on my own we had tremendous help from GIS and other state resources so I can you saw written communications but I think you only have seen a portion of communications that really don't tell the full
story or information that it's important for for what we've done here the work we've done
here OK before I go to uhpresentative U Las let me ask you this where do you live? where do lively
Speaker 201
1:28:34
where do you live live in North Littleotck OK do you travel to
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:28:40
state extensively? have traveled quite a bit over the years. My family lives in Crittenon County and I travel40
about three times a week a month I travel to take care of my parents and I will
Speaker 185
1:28:52
agree with your statement that things can be taken to present one side can be
factual and present one side stronger than maybe the whole thing also you're not from that area here you don't travel that area regular you don't know those people you don't
know the jobs you can look at a piece of paper like I do.
and I don't know the whole story. so that that's from a common sense mindset mine's very common very simple but
we don't know each other's backgrounds and we don't always know the whole story and I think some of that on both sides is what we're dealing with today with that I appreciate that I'm going to ribs interviewubanks miss miss chair
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
1:29:58
been almost a year ago when we were first notified that the governor was going to make an announcement on a Thursday that we were building a prison in Franklin County senator Stubblefield and I were notified that Tuesday that that press conference was going to take place. I believe both of you were in the meeting that I asked for that Thursday morning because Charleston was going to
be having a town hall meeting that night and we met in the conference room behind us where I asked and I think just about everybody that was involved in the site selection or the the main folks were there. and I wanted to know what the criteria was for this site selection. you know the first thing that I was told was that it would be within so many miles of an interstate and I remember commenting, I said well you missed that one right off the
bat and then you went through a lot of the things that have been mentioned as far as workforce and infrastructure as far as roads and everything. But I remember asking specifically have you talked to Fortsmith or Ozark with regard to water availability and my recollection was that I was told yes. Now I saw something that was presented earlier that in that letter where Ozark had I think the department of healthalth had contacted Ozark
and they had3 million gallons excess but I don't know if the right questions were asked of them. I mean is is that raw water? iss that filtered water you know the the pros the problem is you may have a lot of raw water but if you don't have the filtering capacity it's not it's it's not gonna do you any goodiven the news articles that have come out in the last few weeks regarding Fortsmith's issues that they have currently with their water system and that
Ozark is either unable or unwilling to sell water for this project it it really does make me question whether you know, the proper process was gone through in order to determine whether you you have the the infrastructure needed in order to have a3,000 bed prison there. and and just given that fact I you know it doesn't foster a great deal of confidence that the other calculations that were made with regard to workforce and everything are accurate as well
I attended the the Charleston townwn hall. of course I wasn't asked any questions other when other than when I was notified. later there was a town hall in Cecil that I attended and later that week I was asked to come out and ride over the property on a side by side which I did with some people that live very close proximity to the property and that was before it was posted so as far as I know I
didn't break any laws but you know, I I saw the lay of the land but I'm not an engineer, I'm not a builder. I'm not an architect so I, you know we can do a lot of things you know as with building but also know that it looked like there was a lot of solid rock up there and I don't I know that's going to impact building costs and everything I guess, I guess my frustration is I don't know that I have a lot of confidence in the process. This legislature has
hired consultants in the past dealing with a whole host of issues whether it was procurement or healthcare or insurance or whatever it seems like we sort of did that but we didn't allow them to do their job and I don't even know if that's an accurate statement, but I don't I don't I don't think we should expect our our state employees necessarily to have the expertise to make these decisions so I'm not I'm you know, I'm not trying to put the blame on
you but I know you were probably trying to find a location that might fit and it looks like we just tried to make this fit and if half of the stuff that's been presented by the group from Charleston is accurate. I don't think we did I don't know that I have a question for you other than that there seems to be an unwillingness to even consider another site at this point and I and I don't understand that
either. I mean, I've been in business for myself just about my whole adult life and as you get more information and more facts you've got to be flexible enough to make Different decisions and so are you still convinced that you think this is the best site for this prison
Chair
Unverified
1:35:06
Yes sir, I am especially after reading the consultant's report from Mcclellland,
Speaker 216
1:35:13
McClean consulting Engers their report goes through the cultural features threatening a dangered species wetlands inventory the geotechnical studies and that report affirms that our work was sound and that may be debatable but our site selection was sound based on the report that came back from from them and so I I do I'm very proud of our work Follow up Mr chairir
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
1:35:45
go ahead well I I think one of the things that has been brought out was the need for community buyin and it I mean it's apparent that that didn't take place. I mean it was mentioned a couple of times I think Mr.orfiri had actually based off what I viewed on the screen actually said that that was an key ingredient Senator Stubbefield and I represent that area and we didn't have a clue that they was even being considered until the Tuesday before the announcement.
Speaker 216
1:36:17
Yes sir, that that would be a policy lane that would be not my lane and I don't believe it'd be Ann's lane
either that's correct center eyton you Thank you Mr chairir
Senator John Payton
Unverified
1:36:37
so prior to the contract date where the state was obligated to purchase the property what were your departments
tasked with or prior to the commitment date directorlaidlaw what specifically had had your department
been tasked with doing in the way of due diligence Correct obviously we had to
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:37:03
get it under contract before we even have access to the property so a lot of preliminary work was done through GIS
and they're mapping and resources and data that they had to see if where it fell within the criteria that we were working with but once we
contacted the broker, we were able to access the site do some additional work but we had to
actually put the site under contract, before we could, um, before we got an appraisal or before we could order a survey
Senator John Payton
Unverified
1:37:34
so prior to contract was your department ask for a thumbs up or a thumbs down on this property. to do our
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:37:40
due diligence before we could do that well I'm saying before so criteria yes sir we did
do that and we did see that it had
was meeting the criteria so we needed to dive deeper we put it under contract which yes sir there is an exit once we went under contract. that's what the due diligence period is for of course when did
that expire the contract was going to expire late October and so we were given 90 days to do our due diligence and so we did work as quickly as we could during that period of time that's where we were accessing a number of state resources GIS was on the property numerous times. do an evaluations and surveys
and using their drones to get more information as much information as we could but that was our deep dive period so somewhere
Senator John Payton
Unverified
1:38:28
within that0 days bothth your departments gave a thumbs up as this property being suitable by the time we got to the
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:38:35
end of that period we were able to check off those items on the list that we were asked to
accomplish. yes sir for the site assessment. OK
thank you thank you Mr Chair. and just for clarification might help somebody on the two things I can't remember believe it's mid July
where you made a statement not viable
was that within that 90 day period that was before
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:39:01
the 9 I want clarify that Representative wooten you're
recognized thank you Mr Chairman. I have one question if I may of the chairman before we start will will the governor's office respond to their personnel not being here we'll bring that up when we get through with these two thank you is that all you had or you had
more that's it. thank you. I wanna make a statement before I start questioning having been in law enforcement several years ago. I am for a prison we need one but the location that we picked is the wrong one I want you to answer this question did you look at the water did you drill
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:39:57
will let Mr Johnson answer the question because there was a lot of looking at the water yes
Chair
Unverified
1:40:03
sir. he did look at it? yes sir, we evaluated that
Speaker 216
1:40:07
with our partners they were at the Arkansas department of Health it's an engineering section that they they have a regulatory role on water and did you consider
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:40:15
the drillers they drilled out there no sir that happened later so that's not being considered that with the fluoride and the need of a half a million gallons
has not been addressed by anyone in state government is that correct are you
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:40:36
are you do you mean the load the load for tank I'm talking about the water availability supply supply yes sir let me see if I can pull up that
Speaker 248
1:40:44
information for you So I'll just read you the
Speaker 216
1:40:55
selling at parts. This is from Craigorter. He is at the
Arkansas Department of Health he's one of the engineers that works on the water there and his that's
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:41:08
not my question my question is did you did you look at the drilling report developed by the two drillers that drilled out there on that site. No
Speaker 216
1:41:17
sir, that happened after our work was completed what
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:41:20
do you mean it happened afterwards it
Speaker 216
1:41:23
happened after we completed our site selection recommendation so you proved the site not
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:41:30
knowing what the flow rate was of 2.6 10 gallons per day. No sir, it wasn't my role
Speaker 252
1:41:35
to approve the site we were making a recommendation for the site. Our colleagues over
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:41:41
at need somebody needs to kick the chair back and and tell the governor how it is and it and it's gonna have to be some of the staff that's going to do it for one I'm I'm furious about the fact that Mr
Porfrey, whatever his name is from Arizona didn't didn't get here didn't be here.ittee members that's a slap at every one of you that the governor's office is not here and I am not for violent criminals going up and down the street now one more question and let me just go through the whole list. you didn't check the water flow from the drillers The fire wasn't looked at the
electric cuff supply wasn't looked at the soil was not tested. Did y'all test the soil? No sir we didn't test the did not test the soil do you know that they drilled down 190 ft and it hit rock all the way down for except for the last 8 or 10 ft and I know the chairman said if they had to go 1000 ft they would but how much is that going to cost us
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:43:01
but y'all didn't you didn't do any of that did some preliminary work we knew that we makeup we knew the makeup of
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:43:09
the soul we did consult with the soul expert. OK what about the workforce did you look
Chair
Unverified
1:43:13
at the availability of the workforcepresentative Wooten if you if it would if you would allow me I'd like to read you something from the department of healthalth and then I can show
Speaker 216
1:43:21
you an an illustration it's back on your question regarding water the capacity of the four inch line which stops at the property may not be adequate to supply
your proposed facility while a hydraulic analysis would be needed an eight inch maine from the intersection I217 and highway 215 extending north along highway 215 to the entrance to your site will potentially provide adequate water to your site and then I have this exhibit here if you'd like to see a copy of it which is the water pipelines that the department of health has for that area the red dot in this exhibit is the is the site
and just south of that site is an eight inch water line that comes
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:44:08
up to the tower that's onridgeRoad but
that's not answering the question the the the that ag eight inch line is there provided that the water is available. the water is not available up there. The city of Ozark, the city of Fort Smith, the city of Charleston, Paris and the rest of them up they cannot supply the water
of60,000 I've heard or500,000 is that a true statement I don't know you don't know
and yet you're the geologist for the state no sir geographic information systemstes let me ask you madam director
How many trips did you make up
Speaker 192
1:45:02
there ranklin I think I made a total
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:45:06
of to the side numerous trips around the state as we were searching for property yes sir I was involved directly on traveling just looking for sites but I made three trips to Franklin County having a fullfi
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
1:45:24
course no father of questions at this point thank you en Hickey you're recognized as thank you Mr chairir
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
1:45:30
of course I'm one of the members that did not vote for the appropriation but also want to say that my dealings
with both of you all have always been a great with state government. but I'm gonna ask you a pointed question then I want to go back to the water if that's OK. So and I think Senatoreyton may have been hitting on my question but I want to ask it a little more correct. or either of you ever asked to make this site work this site work by any legislator or executive branch any employee or any other political figure and again that'd be all inclusive. I just
want to know did someone say we want to make this work and tell you all to do that some way. no sir so back to this water line. so you are you all are the ones that I need to ask the questions about this we do
Speaker 248
1:46:26
not fulfill the regulatory role over drinking water in Arkansas. However, our colleagues at the department of healthalth do OK well I don't know if
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
1:46:33
they're here. I'm I'm more I'm as withpresentative Woootten about this availability
this whole utility deal has been my concern from the beginning. matter of fact, you know, I even tried to run some legislation to try to get more money because I thought well we cannot do this without this availability and it just wasn't hard to to see that it was not there. Now all of this also come out during the session that you know, Fortsmith was not going to be able to supply the water and rozan didn't have the capacity or the filtering capabilities or this and that and we were getting all that information so we did the s site selection
and you're telling me that there was an eight inch water line which is basically all we did we just seen that there was an eight inch water line that was with that was within so many miles or whatever of the property that's
Speaker 216
1:47:25
that's the nearest large line that comes in from the south there's a four inch line that's in front of the property and so we knew that the river South water system had water pipelines in that area and we knew all
Chair
Unverified
1:47:41
along that all of that infrastructure would likely require upgrades OK but whenever with
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
1:47:45
what we've heard now we understand that it wouldu it might require upgrades and it might be costeffective to do that I've struggled with I've struggled with this from day one that you know you don't find a piece of property that's located within the utilities of the water and the sewer because you know it's on a percentage basis and I'm not saying to pay above market value but I'd rather go out and
pay500,600,700 1000 more for a piece of property that's got those utilities that are not only available but that are able to supply it So I'm hearing this thing about this eight inch water line, but obviously with what's come out this isn't gonna work without throwing you know, I heard you say earlier about it has the potential to carry it well the potential is going to cost how much more now? because I've heard upwards to
200 million,250 million to try to get to try to get that type of wine with that capability to either come from Fort Smith or to do something different. What have you all found that it's going to cost now to get that potential eight inch water line where it needs to be to be able to service this3,000 bed prison. And I'm going to stick with the3000 because that's what we've been told from from the get go
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:49:13
senatory we knew that we were not gonna find a site that had all the infrastructure there on the site we knew
we were going to have to do upgrades and extensions so that was not we didn't go out with the expectation of all being there. I mean this is the size of another community so we just needed access to those utilities we knew there would be cost associated with bringing that infrastructure onto the site to accommodate the prison. the cost associated with the water we are not the ones that are working on that right now we have another department or two that
are actually looking into that to see what options may be available to be able to do that but we didn't expect to drill to find enough water on the site but we did know there was going to be access to water through the information we were able to get from the department of healthalth and the same for the electricity, water treatment plants are something that are are typically have to be done with correctional facilities. um, data communications, a lot of other utilities were also look ed at of course and we were able
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
1:50:15
to be assured that access was there. I understand and if I can, can I
continue Mririr? So I understand what you're saying but with where with where you were then you were you had to you had to assign a cost or somebody had to assign a cost, a contingency that says the upgrade's available we think that you know that we can get that done within6 million dollars or7 million dollars whatever it may have been, I'm making something up
what is that upgrade going to cost to be able to deliver that water all the way to the location to be sufficient and I want to know are we talking about is that is that all inclusive of fire hydrants along the way? Is that other calculating other residents wanting to be able to tap onto it? are we going to be are we going to put those boots and saddles on while the ground's open or are we going to have those residents to do it later what where are we at?
because I keep hearing all this stuff and I heard one of our members ask the questions, what are we doing here today? I'm not a member of this committee. I'll tell you what I'm doing here today. I'm trying to figure out a way to vote for the appropriation and all I do is get farther and farther and farther away. and it's not that I want to be hard . I don't think that unlike a lot of people right now that we've made a boondoggle. I don't think that it is a train wreck I think that we've merely made a
misstep and somebody needs to say we've made a misstep unless you can provide me the information today that says that what that water is gonna cost to get there and then I can talk about the sewer treatment how much more is it going to cost to get where you can turn on
a a spigot a faucet at that location with filtered municipal water yes sir I wish I could answer
Chair
Unverified
1:52:14
your question. I don't have that answer today. Those are studies that are still yet to come
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
1:52:20
thank you Mr. Johnson yes sir Representative Mckenzie you're recognized thank you Mr Chair. appreciate the latitude for nonmembers to ask questions so
Senator hickey asked a question and I think it's important it was it was a direct question but for those that are watching this in the audience or they're tuning in. I want to make sure we're abundantly clear. hass anyone asked you to retrofit or to make this site selection work for a political or nonpolitical reason be the site that we
ultimately recommended back to the executive branch of the government. no sir under no duress you know extent of that ok not since this announcement of the site location has there been any members of the legislature members of the government come to you and ask for the possibility of looking at a different site location if so have has there been any work or preliminary work done to investigate those sites and to see if they're cost effective or possible
Speaker 216
1:53:23
not not subsequently no but we did a quite a bit of work on alternative sites other sites that we had in the portfolio before we landed on this site there was a lot
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
1:53:33
of work done there. Can you just explain some of those additional sites? I mean you don't have to
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:53:38
go you know parcel 125 and Benton County but we s that we were working on that we had through I mean we went through like over 25,000 sites down to6,000 sites down to those that we actually were able to physically go look at and that ' s where we ended up with our
top tier of sites which we did eventually and someone made the comment that that this Franklin County wasn't included in the counties well it was actually the river valley was and so it stretched from Conway all the way to Sebastian County so it clearly was within the area that we had identified as ideal for for the prison for the correctional facility. so we did identify I number of sites we just weren't able to get any other sites under contract up to the point that we had done our due diligence, had moved into due diligence on the
Franklin County site but it was those who were checking the boxes also but you have to have a willing
seller and we just were not able to get to a
Speaker 287
1:54:35
willing seller situation andpresentative Mckenzie if I may, one of the key
Speaker 216
1:54:39
points that it's it's kind of in the fine print of our work but it's very important to understand is it's it's not like just going up to your favorite buffet and ordering off the menu that you can find a site like this the second thing that's im important is
that we also were looking at register or commercial properties that were listed for sale in our early work we we mapped about fi0 properties that were around the state that were listed on the multilist that were at least 250 acres or bigger in size and those what we were looking at we were finding
Speaker 224
1:55:18
what I would con traditionally call hunting property. and so I think that
Speaker 216
1:55:27
and I I wanna say let me just pause for a second and provide thanks for the critique by the citizens from Franklin County they have for sure sharpened their pencils and they critiqued our work and I think that that is you know very democratic process for this committee to be able to allow them to provide that to you today but where I was headed was that one of the things that they articulated in their
presentation was that the difference between urban rural and so when I think about urban rural I think about not highway 215 which is where this site is at sure the that site is a rural site but to me rural is dirt road and where we were finding these commercial properties that were traditionally hunting style what I would characterize as great place for deer hunting. Those those were the larger tracts that you would see come up for sale they would be in upland
areas very steep, usually have hollers and creeks in them and they were accessible only by dirt roads so that dirt road accessibility automatically, you know, you look at those50 properties and we were automatically taking you know a big chunk of those right off the list because they were on a dirt road. just as a quick follow up
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
1:56:50
chair. so we're we're the conversations revolving around is suitability. I would love for a prison site to be like an RV camp where it's we plug in and ready to go we know that's not the case this
is a significant piece of infrastructure I'd love to end to your point about the the folks who the citizen's complaints I think they did a great job of outlining certain elements the suitability of this site compared to the you said 25,000 down to6,000 down to 10 down to whatever other number can we talk about the the financial or fiscal checks that you did and how much were how much more or less were those other sites in comparison to the Franklin County site not without its hangups so I think we all can understand and appreciate that but and then just anecdotally
or to your because you led this recommendation process tell us about some of those hangups that made those sites unsuitable not suitable or the costs that were associated that would put them in a completely not buildable category I wanna take a stamp first if you don't mind
Speaker 224
1:57:51
man we when we looked at those top tier sites we were finding things that were like every site had a pro and a con. and and some of them we found you know right on the interstate. We found other sites
that had expansive flat space but it was on the other side of a railroad track, which means you're looking at it $8 million overpass you know, construction to bring traffic to that site
Speaker 216
1:58:15
so every site that we were looking at had pros and cons. one of our sites had a a a stream that ran through it. It probably precluded it from being able to be a great site because of that stream another site had a cemetery on it and so as we were looking at all these sites they all had some really
glamorous things about them there was one site that was north of Alma had a3 million gallon water tank sitting right on it but
Speaker 224
1:58:41
the owners would never come to the table and we did have one of
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
1:58:48
our top tier sites that we were really excited about and it got sold right out from under us and then they s the new owner had said well we'll talk to you and the price on that property just exponentially was so much higher and and then there were some other conditions associated that
it was just no longer viable for the state. So and that was one of the things about this site when it when we located it it had and I will mention that we had identified it in the big scale of when there were a lot of properties but that property actually went under contract this Franklin County property went under contract so it wasn't on our radar at all. they had a a an experience with I think a solar company that tied it up for a while and so when the property came back on the market, they were not interested in getting you know drawn out in a long due diligence period.
so our contract period was only 90 days but when we circled back and we're able to and had access to it we were we did get kind of excited because it was checking a lot of those boxes that we've been looking for and we had a a seller that was very willing to work with us, give us access, allow us to start doing a lot of that preliminary work that we needed to do so yeah we the price that we were able to get this property under appraised value which thrilled us in addition to that it was a much lower price per acre than we'd expected to
be able to get and certainly less than the few other sites that we were actually able to get that were listed based on the the listing price for those
properties so it was there was a number of of very positives in that respect for the property. One more if that's possible wrap
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
2:00:22
up'm I think innne thank you again Mr Chair it's fair criticism for the the citizen complaintants on the criterion and I will agree that I think I can attest for like Senator hickey in the banking world or Senator Bryan in the ba in the construction world or me and professional services scope
creep kills projects criterion is you know the the mission objective how we align in the tool of accountability from the beginning to that end I also think that it's ok to evolve the criterion to make a site suitable as long as we're you know dealing in apples and oranges and not apples and bowling balls can you help me understand how that criterion changed over time and if if is that still appropriate criterion to this day if you could redo it where we ended up is in we're in the right place for us to be shovel ready to build a prison I think one of
Speaker 216
2:01:08
the things that was possibly misunderstood is that we while while we were looking at the commercially listed real estate that was listed for sale we were also trying to figure out where could we find sites that would be potentially suitable and when we did our analytic we we built a very large model using the county assessor records from the various assessors and across
the state it's 1.8 million plus records and so we needed a way to narrow that down we started by selecting large tracks and then we look for large tract single owner and then we had as Ann pointed out earlier we had over 25,000 candidates and there's no way that an individual could look look through 25,000 candidates so we made an assumption that if we looked for tracks that were situated within a couple of miles of US or interstate highway that would help narrow our field we did that
go from 25,000 down to6,000 candidates and that's where we were at in the6,000 candidates we started to focus our efforts on the upper end of the Arkansas River Valley and looking at those sites that were in that that two mile window around the interstates but that didn't preclude that we weren't looking at other candidates that were on other other state highways and so that's a an example where the the ranklin County folks you know maybe be misunderstood that a little bit that that that interstate access
while it would have been great. it was not a hard rule requirement for department ofrections that was a guideline that we built in to our model to help narrow down the field if that makes sense ok and appreciate
that I'm gonna tie it up a little bit on my time I got board loaded up some's dropped offs come back some come back
on let me just mention real quick something I struggle with during session when we were voting yeah you spent
I say you the state spent $3 million on a piece of land. presented in the presentation everybody knows they've been offered their money back what I have said you can s you could pay $20 million for another piece of land that had more infrastructure from somebody that might not talk to you about that lowball figure that you're wanting to buy it that we all want to bargain and through me it's still a lot but you could spend more money and in the scope of what's going to be spent on a project it's still be affordable so I don't
I'm not asking for a deal I'm just gonna throw that out that was mine I tried to present that during the session I never got anybody admit that's true but still think it was I'm gonna go to senator King and if you all will keep it to 12 questions we'll get back in
the queue senator King thank you Mr chairir
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
2:04:08
you know I've been around a while, 've been through forestry scandal, Bill Walker scandals, University Arso scandals. I understand the people in the middle and by Mrorfiri not showing up that's
where the real questions are going and who really should be grilled. I understand you work for the governor and you do everything, been around a while but my question is to you in this whole discussion I've talked about these megapris that
somebody's worked on it since 2017 in addressing this budget wise and everything to take care of this is you look at Utah Alabama all these mega prisons are mega disasters every one of them have been. they go into promise and everything. Was there any discussion about looking at previous megaprisons that were
built in Utah, Alabama was there any discussion you remember about looking into those
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:04:56
things about what happened yes sir I think we we did do that in fact that is why we
did decide to bring on an owner's rep so we could get the expertise working directly with the team. the owners rep was not being hired to do our site selection for us. they were gonna help with site assessment but we were went out looking for a site but we wanted to bring that owner's rep on that had direct experience with a correctional facility construction so that we could
avoid those pitfalls and mistakes that others had made that we could learn take I mean the designs are there. we don't have to go out and reinvent the wheel. we knew there were plenty of very well designed facilities that we could work with and so that's why we had identified the s the acreage that we needed that we felt would accommodate the number of beds that were needed and we were we were gonna work with the cookie cutter so we were we were learning from those mistakes, learning from those designs that had been developed and so we had a pretty good
understanding of of how we could start that process and the owner's rep was was
Speaker 92
2:05:54
brought on to help us to facilitate that carry us through that process as efficiently as we could. OK like I said, I
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
2:06:00
understand who you work for and what you got to do and the message you've got to present and Mr.orfiri and Mr Chairman I'd just like to say looks like we've got a better chance of getting Jeffrey Epstein here to talk about child sex trafficking and they do Mr. Porfiri who's paid almost a quarter of a million dollars a year salary and benefits and has been
the central person. I just saw him in the capitol earlier
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
2:06:21
today so he's around we'll we'll address that here in a minuteenator Di man you'reco and then send apresentative Kavanaugh after that all right thank you
and so just to make sure I understand there was another site you all looked at it as soon as they found out you were looking to you know purchase for the prison the price went up there was one particular site that yes sir that
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:06:39
did happen otherthers we weren't even able to get the owners to agree to even negotiate with us to put them under contract. so the shocker is is that once it becomes public that you're looking to buy a particular
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
2:06:53
piece of property probably details of that transaction change and not in the favor of the buyer one question I have is because I think I've seen it but it's been a little while because we're removed from session now at this point but there was an allocation for wastewater and water as far and I think that may have come in not like I said as far as the assessment of the site do you recall what those dollar numbers were for what it would take to get water what we kind of budgeted for and again I know that may be on the wrong group because you were looking at the purchase side not the assessment after the fact
Speaker 289
2:07:27
I'm not aware of those numbers senator all right
Speaker 228
2:07:33
thank you uhpresentative Kevanaugh you'd recognize thank
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
2:07:35
you Mr Chairman over here. one of the criteria for the site was community buyin and that's one in particular that is interests me more than some of the other things we're hearing can you tell us how you determined community buyin for this site when it was selected.
Speaker 216
2:07:58
that that was not not in our lane our role was on the recommendations looking at other criteria and so that criteria was we were looking at the physical characteristics and that that social aspect was not something that we were directly involved in so I'm I'm sorry I can't answer your question was to make
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
2:08:19
that determination about so if we're going to ask that question
ultimately who was the person responsible for determining and how they
Speaker 316
2:08:28
determined community buyin. owner's representative was going to help with that
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:08:34
process and so the owner's representative that was under contract that was one of the roles that they were going to play was to to carry us through that process with the community but it was not something that our offices were going to be directly involved with.
Speaker 204
2:08:47
OK do and I don't want to sound rude
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
2:08:50
ma'am but it's not up to the owners to determine community buyin for the state of Arkansas. Someone within the state should have been making the determination about what the
community ' s feeling were for this because I know there are lots of communities that would have loved to have it because it's going to be a an economic boom and I I don't disagree with that but one of the the core contentions we have here with this site is community buyin and are you trying to say there wasn't anybody in the state that was looking at community buyin. they were just looking at the physical location but they weren't really looking at community buying representative our
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:09:29
responsibility did not include the community buy in that was not like like a Mr Johnson said that was not a role that we were going to play but yes ma'am it was going to happen with the state. there was that was another the next step that was coming but it was not in our in our list of responsibilities. OK who's responsibility was that the
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
2:09:48
owner's representative that was hired was going to be
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:09:51
working directly with Department of Corrections to carry it through that process. So a department oforrections was the one that was supposed to be fine that's
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
2:10:00
what I'm trying to find out in yourstate the Department of Corrections are the one that was supposed to be working on how to determine community buy in
Speaker 216
2:10:12
ok thank you Ripson ofalvanau if I may you you you raise a point that I think is worth worth diving into just briefly you mentioned other communities that did want to to bring a location and we look we we looked at those the department of corrections had put out an invitation to communities across the state in
2 late 2022 and the records that we got from that were from Marshall and Cercy County. they had offered up40 acres that was in at near the end of the runway at their airport city of Fortyce had a35 acre site that was right on the edge of town. and then both Hope and Prescott teamed together and they had two bible sites from a physical aspect that we're in Hempstead County and when we looked at those they were you know 228 miles down the road from the DLc site that's
inexarkana and then when we looked at the worst four figures that were for that particular location it was like a little over 303536 1000 workforce and so while it is true to say that there were other communities that did want a location they didn't they the the sites just they weren't viable OK umm gonna gonna
Speaker 138
2:11:29
try to get everybody on the board and going priority to committee members
represented for your you're recognized it's kind of a
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
2:11:39
financial question if you folks can't answer it hopefully someone from your apartment will so just two quick ones. how much total money has been spent on this project as of right now including land purchase and all that and then I'll follow that up with approximately how much money is it going to cost us for you to tell us how much this is going to cost us. but we don't have the
Speaker 200
2:12:00
we don't have the funding for the project so we know that the property purchase was done for I think
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:12:09
around 2.9.75 and then with with these I think it was close to 2.9 million and that transaction was done through Arkansas Development Finance Authority. that's the only I guess expense that we've been associated with directly most of the other work we did without a budget and so we did it did it through our state resources as far as being able to get a true estimate or getting the design completed to get an estimate that will fall of course with the design team which are are currently on hold right now.
Speaker 216
2:12:43
I might now add that for our work on the site selection it was the the cost was our time and we were able to work that in with our other work. so while we maintained our existing workload on 911 and some of the other work that we do it it fell toward the end of the calendar year around the holidays and our work with cities and counties slows down a lot during that holiday window that's like late December and so a lot of our work was done in that latter
part of the year so for as far as the site selection costs our work it
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
2:13:19
was just our time sir I appreciate that one quick follow up chair. so I appreciate that and covers several departments but I do think those if there's folks here and I don't know who's supposed to be here and not here to answer that but if you are here, I think those are two good questions that would be great to all this committee to hear
Chair
Unverified
2:13:37
so appreciate that thank you senator Hill you dropped off OK ensure Mark Johnson you
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:13:44
recognize thank you Mr Chairman I have a quick question for the chair and then another quick question for our witnesses Mr Chairman there's been some complaints about Mr Porfiri not being here he was invited and I assumed that was by the co-chairs he was invited to the co-chair's agreements and staff did that
and did not hear back ok so the fact that he is an employee of the governor and not
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:14:17
an agency then he would he and she would certainly have the ability to not attend because of a separation of powers issue amm I reading that correctly as opposed to
someone who is a would be subpoenaed and certainly I would allow you
to make your own assumptions the thing about this this the the legislative body approved funding for him the first time that he took on that role and then after that that may have got wrapped into the governor's budget
I think it is a slap at this body not to even answer us and say he cannot be here or whatever but we'll take a
possible motion on that when when these two witnesses get through thank
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:15:01
you Mr Chair and I'll I'll now address the question to to slave laww and Mr. Johnson one of you said something about a site that was very good but the owner in effect was not interested in selling did we somehow or another lose the right of eminent domain that
could be used in this because I'm I'm thinking yes it'd be nice if you had someone that really had a great parcel and wanted to sell it on the other hand the the cost of the dirt is one of the nominal costs of wherever this is located and we're talking about you know half a billion dollars for this and water and all the the other infrastructure things was eminent domain off the table when you were doing this study the division of building authority doesn't have the power
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:15:50
in domain anywhere other than Pulaski County. can you say that one more time we only have that power within Pulaski County. we do not
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:16:00
have it statewide we meaning your agency but not the department oforrections or the s state or state government is that am I reading that correctly? I
Speaker 216
2:16:09
I'm not aware of that that capability but I can speak from just our, you know our work we were not looking at sites where you were going to go to that level because that gets you
into the challenge of working through just compensation and we we just we kind of made the conscientious decision at least for our part of the work and the modeling is there's got to be a side out there. let's go find it and that does then you wouldn't be in the
Speaker 252
2:16:37
position of exercising eminent domain well and I think it's clear that you know we
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:16:43
have a few folks here that didn't want it to be in their backyard and I can understand that I mean but it's
gotta have gonna have to go in someone's backyard if we're gonna have a prison and I'm just I'm thinking that maybe we we looked at this a little bit inside out instead of outside in and I'm I'm I'm wondering I mean it I just think that it should be on the table that if you find a site that otherwise works since again the the the acreage and all that is is a nominal I mean it's it's a not insignificant but comparatively speaking it's relatively
insignificant cost of this the all the infrastructure things are really what seems to be and it so I just want to make sure that that wasn't ignored in the process and and Miss Laidlaw the fact that your agency only has in domain P pulaski countunty. I get that but these are the kind of things that you know can be worked out I mean I I worked in an agency once where we exercise eminent domain there wasn't any question whether we could take a property now you get a right of entry and the judge would say ok we're going
to have a trial and we're going to determine what the compens ation is but there was never any question that the state could take it and I I hope that didn't cause a either a delay or or something improper not blaming y'all or anybody on that but but I'm just trying to so you you so you may your agencies made a decision in effect to say there's plenty of places out here that seem to want it and we think we can find one that might work without having to look at condemning property my
understanding you're answer correctly all right you answered
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:18:29
it I disagree with the decision
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:18:31
but I appreciate your candor and thank you thank you Mr Chairman. members try to be as
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
2:18:39
concise as we can for time going to committee membersative Mary Bentley and then going to central icky Hill after that thank you Mr Chair Cindy Crawford
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:18:50
right here I'm in Mary's chair on the committee
are you on the committee someone had my chair so had to sit and you are recognized thank you for the first time I like an answer you gave. that we're not gonna take people's property. thank you for that I think we as a body need to realize that we are not here to take property away from people and that the senator is ridiculous
if we are gonna take property away from people we don't need to be here and so I would ask you do you agree Yes ma'am you re thank you senator icky Hill.
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
2:19:52
Going back to to what we've been looking at and talking about throughout this you mentioned that y'all went
through all the different properties and everything trying to find the
right size close to where it is and everything how is it that a solar company a crypto mining company can come in and they designate the area where they want to be and they can go in and buy property in those areas where the infrastructure is already set up for them yes you have to pay a little bit more but it saves you in the long run because you don't have to why did we not look at something like that where you've found what you wanted with the infrastructure there that's already said where they've got the water they've got the sewer they've got
everything they can accommodate it and just pay a little more for the land because someone will sell it to you in that area that'll save you it may cost you instead of $3 million it may have cost you $20 million but you're going to spend a lot more than that on the infrastructure. why can we not do like a public company in search that way are you referring to the site we did
Speaker 200
2:20:52
find the site that actually was purchased is that the site you're you're referring to? I'm just referring to overall why didn't y'all go out and say we
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
2:21:00
need 2000 acres of land whatever you need and go to an area where they have the power lines already running through there your main substation they've got the the sewer and everything and by it that way instead of saying hey let's go build a city why didn't why didn't we look at doing it that way because your infrastructure yes it's gonna cost you more upfront you know that going into it but it's going to save you in the long run and you do your due diligence before you make an offer you know hey we can buy this property for x amount of
money everything's here it sounds to me like we didn't do our homework on the front end and now we're trying to do it
Speaker 287
2:21:39
on the back end it's a very very fair question senator hill and and that property that you
Speaker 355
2:21:43
just described is in a city well you didn't offer enough money for it then
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
2:21:49
because you would have got it bought if you
Speaker 224
2:21:52
would have tried to no I I mean I didn't mean specifically what I meant was generically what
Speaker 216
2:21:57
you're describing where all of the infrastructure is already there
is going to be more than likely inside a municipal boundary the municipal ity has taken on that challenge of bringing sewer to that location for municipal purposes the water's there for municipal purposes those kinds of infrastructure that would normally be all of those things that we would all have desired for the perfect site would almost always be inside one of our municipalities OK let's take a farming area I know this I'm just gonna throw a town at England Arkansas
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
2:22:35
you've got workforce on LittleRock you've got water you you've got your infrastructure there I'm just throwing that one out there you know yes it is
Speaker 224
2:22:43
possible 26 miles from Damont or not Darmont excuse me Brightsville my bad I just use that
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
2:22:48
town as an example I just grabbed it out of the
Speaker 359
2:22:52
air we we ruled out a lot of a lot of Arkansas was ruled out because of DOC's criteria that said we want to be further away than60 miles from where understand I understand that you may just take for another town
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
2:23:06
or another another name of a town that
could work as far as in west Arkansas I just used England as an example. I could have used
Speaker 216
2:23:19
loan oak yeah the the upper end of the river valley was really the the the region that we centered on and focused in on if you think long range50 years out from now that'll be at the intersection of I40 and I-49. it has it it will be an area that is
growing its population will continue to grow and so those those cities and towns that are on the upper end of the Arkansas River alley would have been our our our high target areas that we're really looking for those sites though that would be like not in these cities but near these cities Alma van Bbuen Fortsmith barlinglovacca Greenwood uh'm trying to trying to think of all of them off the top of my head sorry I can't
Speaker 224
2:24:02
remember all at a number of sites there and and
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:24:08
there were several of those that did hit our top tier but getting to the point of being able to get a contract we were not would you please talk to mic where I can hear you we did have a number of those areas in our shortlist and our top tier we were not able to get to a contract with those owners. In fact one of them we found out actually had the future of highway was gonna be running right through it or interstate was going to be running right through it so we were we were really close on the target on that one but we just we have sites that were eliminated we weren't able to get them under
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
2:24:38
contract have y'all estimated how much more it's gonna cost us now overall than if
Chair
Unverified
2:24:49
facility bought no no sir thank you
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:24:52
thank you going topresentative Long and then uhs representative beattypresented Richmond and then represented Lungstrom uhpresentative Long you recognize thank you Mr Chairman and I thank y'all for
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
2:25:03
showing up I've had a couple of questions
one was there ever any consideration to doing like three different 1000 bid you know prison sites it's you know we'd basically wouldn't need nearly as much water in different areas like that that's actually a programming matter for the department we
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:25:21
were not that wasn't in a part of our decisions that we were working with so no sir we did not personally do that we were we were looking for a site that would accommod ate the correctional facility that we were asked to look for and
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
2:25:36
next question what was the total acres of this site in
Speaker 224
2:25:39
in Farklin County it was lit it was originally listed for 825. but after after survey after land survey it pared down to 810 and you know they had a
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
2:25:53
toppo map up earlier but it didn't have any slopes listed any idea what the average slope is on this lockx've I've never been to that area or even really seen any photo s of it I I don't know the
Speaker 259
2:26:04
I don't remember the slope off of the top of my head. it is
Speaker 216
2:26:11
it's south facing and it I would describe it as gentle to rolling there are other people who would describe it as a steep and I guess that's your perspective. but if you go to the site exhibit that was a part of the packet you can find the contrary information in there and also so there's a trainra model in there that allows you to see what the train looks like when on
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
2:26:36
the USDA sole description I was looking at it and it looked like the interseries and
the uhlinker series with the only two that had suitable souls as far as depth to rock to do like a subsurface septic system are y'all looking at strictly just doing off site surface discharge type system I I think from day
Speaker 216
2:26:58
one DOC has probably and I sure don't want to put words in their mouth but I think that their expectation was that they would be doing treatment on site building wastewater treatment on site and discharging into a creek I guess
appreciate it ok and members just tell you where we're at we're coming up on3:30. it was my goal to start winding down by4:30 and get out of here
by5. got a full board I've still got deals BOC chairman uhinnie magnusson member Lee Watson to bring up please keep that in mind representidatdy to recognize us thank you Mr
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:27:39
chairir director Johnson kind of a question in the presentation from from
the group we heard some comments about workforce and the numbers that they used around 108,000 on the workforce could you speak to the workforce and and your your study if you prepared those numbers that you give us
Speaker 216
2:28:01
some information on that workforce yeah and I I think that the the the citizens accurately described when I spoke with the consultant that did did that work for
like that consultants worked for a company that ended up locating here in LittleRock and that facility was a large employer and it was an industrial manufacturing facility and rightly they the the citizens determined that I did not understand their math and that's because I I read the way they presented it literally. after studying that and looking at how you might want to segment the workforce we made a raw assumption
Speaker 224
2:28:45
and it was a very simplistic assumption and what drives workforce more than anything especially in Arkansas is willingness to commute and and we know the reason
Speaker 216
2:28:58
we know that is because of our other mapping work that we do from time to time and I'm gonna give you a really good example when we had the solar eclipse we mapped our state's workforce state employees and where
they're at and where they're willing how far they're willing to drive and we mapped our own workforce because we thought a lot of our workforce is going to want to see this event and what we found is that a large part of our workforce lives quite far away from work we narrowed in on about a30 mile drive distance what we call a drive shed and what we did was we calculated that 30 mile drive shed from the various sites that we looked at and then we overlaid the US census blocks that were inside that 30 mile
driving distance and then we just counted up the total population in that drive shed and then the population age 18+ in that drive she. and so that then allowed us once we had that model model built we could we could plug coordinates in for any site and run that model really fast and be able to evaluate any other sites and so I I have a bunch of
Speaker 359
2:30:13
those exhibits that that I could I could show you
Speaker 373
2:30:18
we're we're gonna need to shorten our answer
Speaker 374
2:30:24
a little bit'll I'll stop at that is that it well
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:30:28
I would have liked to hurt a little more but I think basically that that addresses the question he did work look at workforce and and that workforce study would reach out to the Fortsmith area as far as a a commute back and forth to the proposed site yes sir at that particular
Speaker 216
2:30:42
location we we we found out that it would even reach a little bit into
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:30:49
Oklahoma. Oh thank you and then the the final question we also heard some remarks made as far as fire protection in that area can any either of you speak to the fire protection that could be provided
Speaker 216
2:31:03
for that site one of the things that we learned in our visits with our colleagues at DOC is that it's very regular for them to build their own fire capabilities on campus. within the campus and so fire was fire is a
concern certainly we're gonna have a robust public safety. we also learned that as you would expect sometimes accidents happen during discussion or construction and so you would want some capability there at least somewhere nearby for in the event of a construction accident and so that's kind of why we were looking at that twofold helps help with fire suppression for wildli firere and then on on campus you would have that
contained and then you would have just the run of the mill and emergency response with volunteer first responders, which would come from those neighboring nearby departments right thank you
Representative Mark Perry
Unverified
2:32:02
sir thank you Mr chairir. Representative Richardson you dropped off right ok. I thought it thank
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
2:32:10
you Mr Chair my question is this the email said that you found it not viable? Was that one of you guys who ok what
changed if you thought it was not viable 90 days before you did that what changed your
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:32:26
mind to say that it is drive using highway 96ay that one more time drive to the property where I used Highway 96 to access the property and when a team more experienced than I went back out and looked at it they used highiwei I guess 22 and that's where we determined that most of the workforce would be using 22 out of both Sebastian County and beyond microphone up closer to
Speaker 204
2:32:52
you my people over here at all it was I chose highway 96 instead of highway 22 to
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
2:33:00
access the property and it was also stated that I think Senator King said that the the road was had grass coming up and I got the redo the road or is
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:33:08
that an accurate that was highway 96 yes sir
Speaker 361
2:33:12
thank you uhpresentative Longstrom and then representative wooten thank you I just had a
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:33:17
quick question you had mentioned a few cities what cities were those again?
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:33:24
had looked at in addition to the ranklin County we also were in Clarksville Alma , Fort Smith doesn't
leave any outgre greenwood greenwood and Huntington mansfield we looked at sites
Speaker 257
2:33:42
oh I'm sorry did you want all of them?'m just writing them down I'm just curious out of all those
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:33:48
cities and they wanted the prison to come in their
Speaker 216
2:33:55
backyard no ma'am. I didn't mean to insinuate that earlier. I I was when I was speaking with addressing Senator Hill what I was meaning was those were locations where you would have all of that infrastructure but they would be you know within a municipality iss is there something wrong with
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:34:11
having it within a municipality we have manufacturing and other things in the in the ms municipality. I understand there's some municipalities that wanted to have the prison. who are those? the municipalities that expressed an interest and
Speaker 216
2:34:28
provided a a proposal were for us Marshall in Cercy County and then Prescotthope teamed together on sites that were one was in hempstead County and the other one was pretty close by and neighboring Nevada County just just across the county line so and they wanted to
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:34:48
have those yes ma'am and and
Speaker 216
2:34:51
as I mentioned earlier all of those were s the reality is they were all in
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:35:00
the wrong spot radius of the correctional facilities except for the marshall
and it was it was not large
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:35:09
enough it was acres acres so we're worried about cannibalizing employees why not just pay them all enough that we'd want
to have more employees. I mean I'm not understanding why we'd worry about that and if we
Speaker 359
2:35:20
could just pay folks to come to work uhs at a at a at a big picture scale it's sustainability of population
Speaker 216
2:35:26
if you look at and I've I've actually prepared this for
Speaker 364
2:35:32
one of the board members let me let me actually staffing obviously Department of Corrections
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:35:37
would be better suited in answering that question fair enough I appreciate that
Speaker 224
2:35:43
the information that I can share really off the top of my chart here is that
Speaker 216
2:35:49
from 2019 to2023 on our population 11 of our current DOC facilities are in counties where the population is declining. that's a population decline area then when we jump forward and we look from or jump backwards to look
at the period 2010 to2019,13 out of our so in that last decade 13 out of our 20 DC facilities are in population declined counties and so you are the best way I can express it is that 100 years ago our prisons were mostly in the right place fast forward they're they're not all in the right place anymore and it's because of our population growth which is toward western and northwestern Arkansas don't argue that at all. I see it all every day in northwest Arkansas
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
2:36:36
all right I'll hop out and get back
in if I need to. thank you. and
if you wanted to try to put that northwest Arkansas umpresentative Longstrom probably help you oh I've got her I've got her back in the
got3 plus representative Longstrom I'm gonna go to please be as quick as you can I'm gonna wrap these up we've got two more that I want to get to uhpresentative
Woootton you recognize thank you Mr Chairman
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
2:37:10
and I'll try not to use my coaching voice but I want clarification on one question did you say that you cut it down to two miles within an interstate in in our modeling we were looking
Speaker 224
2:37:26
at that to try to narrow the total numbers that we were trying to sift through so
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
2:37:34
with 1000 miles of interstate in
Arkansas ruptly it's actually 9,885 or 985 you couldn't find a site not not further than60 miles from one of
Speaker 224
2:37:49
the existing prisons which was one of our other criteria but you could find
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
2:37:54
a site we did well but it's 23.3 miles off the interstate no we we did find sites
Speaker 364
2:38:02
that were on on interstate did you did you share
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
2:38:06
that with the governor's office
the department of correction that's fine my next question is do you still and you may not be able to answer this, but do you still stand by the $825 million number that's that's not our that's not our role. I'm sorry sir
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:38:27
what that's not our role in this is to
Speaker 200
2:38:33
to to clarify or to quantify the cost of for the correctional facility.
could not understand what you said that's really not our role to be able to clarify or justify
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
2:38:50
the cost for the prison facility we're just working with the property so the 825 million is that number viable from the governor's office or the department of correction can you answer that being a state agency believe the department oforrection
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:39:04
with their owner's representative came up with that number. yes sir thank you thank you Mr Chairman. Representative ye
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
2:39:16
Yes sir. thank you Mr Chairman . There's people in this room that can remember only a few years ago that we were working on matching money for highways if we come up with fi0 this s the feds would come up with 200 million we barely made that now we've got counties that were paying around40 dollars a person to be in in incarcerated but
we're gonna spend 85 million 85,000 on on your your your proposed way of doing things you know I just wonder if we've really checked this out like we should thank you Representative Matt Brow ing chair
Speaker 410
2:40:19
you had mentioned an eight inch water line. Where was that at? You you had two highways was it 215 highway 217 I think that's
Speaker 287
2:40:26
right let me double check that for you sir it comes up to Jane it comes up it comes up alongside JamesRoad and it comes up to a tower that is on a tank that's onridge roadad do you know about how far that is from the location yeah it's a little over two miles
Speaker 414
2:40:51
and then follow Mr chair earlier there was some testimony about there wasn't any power out there but I mean it looks to me like there's a high voltage line that
crosses the middle of the property is that correct? Yes sir right thank you Mr chairir. OK members my board went blank thank you for being here thank you for your
Speaker 259
2:41:17
testimony appreciate your time Mrir I I didn't get a 100% opportunity to respond tosenator Hill's
Speaker 216
2:41:23
original question very one wrap it up quickly yes sir I'll be very quick. I just wanted to acknowledge my team that worked on this. I had a total of 8 staff working on this assistant in the project through those staff hold master's degrees in agriculture forestry and community and regional planning.6 of my staff hold bachelor's degrees in geography, political science and history. I have one registered forrester on staff. I have one person on my staff that's a level4 a certified appraiser from the assessment coordination division and also
have two licensed surveyors when we put that team all together I have over 100 years of combined experience in his career and so I would like to make sure that the committee is aware that we we did have experience thank y'all ok members
quick break before I bring the last two up and let me just state this if you'll listen to me in just a minute it's evidently been said that my cochair and I were
contacted that Mr Profury was not going to be here that is false I was contacted by governor Stafford yesterday my co-chair was contacted by different governortafner yesterday and mentioned that Mr. Johnson mislaidlaw were gonna be here and I said thank you they said I just want to know notify the chairs I said I appreciate that I did not ask specifically and they did not mention Mister Purry's name
so at this time I will entertain a motion it will take a 2/3 vote of separate houses since the senate's chairing today would be the senate first I'll entertain a motion to authorize the co-chairs to begin the process issuing a subpoena as authorized below . I have a motion to have a second have a have a second in the senate I got thank you all in favor I opposed
OK members I'm heard house over here. house can't vote in this separateate chambers y'all have your chancesenate does Senate members of the committee only all in favor
I opposed fails thank you Next up we have chairman of
the board ofrections bennie magnus if you come up and border correction member Lee Watson
requested to be here we appreciate y'all being here we appreciate your patience not the first time y'all been to the table so you know the routine and while you're standing let me issue that if
you punch that microphone and tell us your name first did you punch did you punch a button there? there you go my name isinnie magnus with the Arkansas Board of Corrections
Lee Watson
Unverified
2:44:32
my name is Lee Watson with Arkansas Board oforrections. OK thank you
if you raise your right hand do you solemnly swear that affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yes I do thank
both of you please take a seat you gentlemen have any statements no sir just here to ask your question appreciate
that and first up I havepresentative Mayberry you're recognized
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:45:11
here we go. thank you so much for allowing me to to ask a question. so it it kind of got mentioned representative Long as of the question and I just want to expand a little bit more because I I think this is probably a little bit more in your wheelhouse. so is this just too big of a project3,00 prison bed prison was there ever discussion when finding the location was becoming difficult that maybe we don't need3,000 all in one spot
that we need to separate it into 3 1000 bed prisons. What was that ever discussion before or were we just so set on it's got to be all in one place and moving forward is that possibly a solution so we can divide out the workforce and possibly find a place that has water enough to to meet all'll just kind of open that up and see if you can answer. Well I'll try to answer it the you'd have to go back to
Chair
Unverified
2:46:13
some of the historical ways we participate in trying to build prisons in the past or attempting to build prisons I was involved in the new prison construction at Malvern Arkansas and we did it similar to what we started in prior to this administration took an taking over we put out fillers to ask people to apply for communities to apply and that at that point it was at
that time we were looking at possibly a 1500 bed facility if I remember correctly and the so that shortly after the administration that's here now come seeing a need of more beds of3,000. sometimes and the larger facilities are easier excuse me more
cost efficient to run or to build because each facility has to have a school each facility has has kitchens so when you build multiple ones you multiply that so in some arguments that a larger facility is more cost efficient so but in the past we have done it opposite that the way it was done this time
the method that we had used in the past was taken away from us and that that the administration would look for a site for a3,000 bed prison and a3,000 at present I don't know where that number came from I would say that me and Mr Wattson might disagree a little bit in that area I see a need for3,000 beds the county is hurting we're at 2000 now we
have 10,000 inmates or parees that susconded from justice so I believe with the future in three years coming in the growth of the states I see the need in3000 I'm not saying it needs to be in one to answer
Lee Watson
Unverified
2:48:33
your part of your question we weren't involved in that discussion that was not something that that basically happened without the board's involvement as
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:48:40
far as that specific number I will tell you at the end of 20 22 where we were was that we
had75 million dollars to expand calico rockck or north central whichever you want to call it and that costed come gone up I think gover governor Hutchinson had backed off his support because the price had gone up I think from75 million to 125 million we were ready to pull the trigger on that and start moving on that the architectural and engineering work was done and and we were ready to move but there were what happened in that instance there were some lay of the land issues that
that increase the cost also it wasn't just inflation and and at that point we were looking at as I remember it was 10021 to1500 beds and then when our new secretary came in that was all pushed to the side and and the march was on for3,000 bed facility. do
Lee Watson
Unverified
2:49:40
you think that that might be a feasible option
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:49:51
moving forward if we're talking I I understand that the cost it makes sense one kitchen, one school etc. but if we're not going to be able to have the water to get there to meet the needs of a3,000 bed prison and having to spend so much more on those other infrastructure things might it be something to look at at choosing three different locations or some other variable like that is that something that you all will consider absolutely I think the main thing we need more beds I mean I
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:50:21
think that's something everybody in the room behind us and behind me in front of me everybody can agree upon we need more beds as quickly as we can add beds we've added almost 1500 more beds in the facilities but I will tell you today I looked at the numbers our department of corrections facilities are filled to 109% capacity that's not safe for the officers it's not safe for the inmates it's not safe for the general public so we we do need to to move and a while back
I wrote a letter to some members of the legislature and my focus was how can we most rapidly add beds we've we've squeezed everybody in we can and if we can most rapidly add500 beds atcalicoRock and 1000 beds wherever with the plan as as soon as the money available design it like you would a school or anything else that might expand to add another 1000 wing as soon as you can then however we get there the fastest is the most important and most valuable to all of us I think.
Chair
Unverified
2:51:27
thank you senator Josh Bryight you recognize thank
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:51:30
you Mrir. I guess only one question that I had based on this presentation from the citizens group is there's a a statement I think it was item number3 of a slide that said to reduce the minimum requirements for basically the rehabilitation in the classrooms down to minimum ACA standards can you explain what that what that means in terms of footprints and is that was that a board decision or was that a executive branch governor's
Chair
Unverified
2:51:58
decision ACA I'm sure you're talking about it American Correctional association when you use that term they do have guidelines for for sales on how many feet of area for each inmate proudly enough the state of Arkansas is ACA credited in every unit we have and we want you know not all states are are 100% accredited in all the facilities we are and so you know in building the prison
it's not been determined yet how hard you build that prison and what that means is whether you're being in building 50 man barracks , 25 man barracks two man sales there's so much that comes into the building of a prison to be able to operate it and and also to build it with what money and needs you need so people in corrections professionals like to have single man sales they're easy to
maintain very expensive in Arkansas probably cannot afford to have a facility we have one it's almost single man sale it's called norris maxx we can't hardly afford that in our, our facilities to go that far hardened do you know if that at one time where
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:53:29
we anticipating doing more than what this minimum standards
were to create a a system that was different thanarnnerCummins unit or less maybe less hard is just as secure but more about pushing out rehabilitation programs and then we've shrunk it or is that never
Lee Watson
Unverified
2:53:48
really been a discussion in that sort of
Speaker 454
2:53:54
conversation mislaidlaw made several statements a few times about that they were working with
Chair
Unverified
2:53:59
DOC DOC we had the the board had laid out some
floor mats of not so close to another unit to to to rob our staff we did set some criteria but when she said she was talking to DOC I can only assume that she was talking to Secretary Profia because he wasn't including us in on those conversations or those decisions and then
Speaker 454
2:54:26
final question just because I've only been to
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:54:29
Varner Cummins about three times for a tour just to understand it I've never really went and looked at the
utility side of a supermaxx. my understanding is that it's served by33 wells and that there's the appropriates treatment at the at the whaheads to feed that facility. A facility like this that does not have access to that type of well water I I assume we have prisons that use, you know,500,000 gallon towers that are fed by an eight inch line well more than enough sustain the capacity issues for a prison and refill overnight. or do we feed all our wells
directly with just a hard line or about half
Speaker 454
2:55:13
of our facilities are on municipal water and half of them are on their own water
Chair
Unverified
2:55:19
calico rock has two wells and one is 1285 ft deep and one of them is7 7 5 0 ft deep and
Speaker 432
2:55:30
both of those feet of water tank I forget what size be way over 100,000 gallons ok and how big is that facility
it's right at it's rated for 850 we have 900 and something in there right now.
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:55:46
OK. and then as far as the wastewater treated on site at most of those facilities
Chair
Unverified
2:55:52
are using a municipal system and that was the what raised the cost of calico rock after we did our study in the expanding it we were at our maximum on our wastewater and we were gonna have to update and expand our wastewater to be able to expand that other400 and
some inmates at at CalicoRock because we were and that's what raised our cost up some cost of the billing supplies and and the wastewater plant caused us to have to give a figure of right around 125 million to governor Hutchinson right right thank you gentlemen and representing Bryant we're glad you were
Representative Mark Perry
Unverified
2:56:35
just taking a turn visiting not not wanting to be a permanent resident
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
2:56:43
representative perry you're recognized thank you chair. I'll just go back to would you gentlemen be able to answer a financial question? OK you may not be in the room when I asked it earlier but what's the total amount of money as of right now that this project that we've spent on this project
Chair
Unverified
2:57:05
sir it's not a it's not about approximate it's what the legislature and executive branch gives us to build with so if that's 825 million we may not be able to
get but twenty52600 beds out of that 825 million I appreciate that
Speaker 463
2:57:19
response I'm not that complicated of a question just how
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
2:57:22
much have we spent on this project approximately right now not not what can we build with what just kind of curious how
far we are into this if I don't think
Speaker 432
2:57:33
I can answer that question without Mr Brown or our accountant here and can give a little bit of information
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:57:39
part of what was testified to earlier was the purchase price of the property
of that yes sir and did check and was vanner I think we spent somewhere between 900 well pardon me they've billed us for 900 and some odd 1000 I think 830 or so has been paid we've declined some of those charges so we're in the media were safe
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
2:58:03
to say we're under5 million dollars as of today. that'd be a under5 million and do we know you know we talk about the what the water's going to cost and all that and I
understand we but what what are we gonna have to spend to find out those approximate cost of getting the water here, getting the electric lines upgraded sewerpla all the infrastructural costs alongside the building what are we gonna have to spend to find those numbers roughly I don't have
Speaker 432
2:58:32
I don't have an answer for you we don't have our engineer architect hiredjet for
Chair
Unverified
2:58:35
this for that project to start going out trying to get those numbers for us and we just don't have that answer for you
Speaker 327
2:58:46
OK so so well I appreciate that thank
Senator John Payton
Unverified
2:58:52
you chair en ator e y ton you recognize thank you Mr Chair.
So y'all are both board members and there's an accusation made in these complaints that while the board removed Mr Profury and he was replaced by Secretary Wallace that they're both s sharing the duties or or maybe
Secretary Wallace is not able to fulfill the secretarial role and that it says specifically Mr Profury is skirting his firing by the board of corrections by continuing at the helm of the Department of Corrections can you speak to that complaint Who's running the department of corrections or that senator mean think that
Speaker 432
2:59:37
Mr Profia works for the governor and Secretary Wallace works for us and that's the best
Chair
Unverified
2:59:42
way I can answer it for you. So how much
Senator John Payton
Unverified
2:59:47
duplicity is there in those and there are two roles at this point how much they do together No how much does it overlap if they if you're giving them something to do and the governor's giving them something to
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:00:01
do how much overlap is there we we don't give
Lee Watson
Unverified
3:00:03
any we don't give Mrorfiri anything to do and in fact we have almost no communication with him and have had he was exited by the board so we you know we do know that
Senator John Payton
Unverified
3:00:17
so specifically where the where this complaint says Mr Porfiri is skirting his firing by theorrection by continuing at the helm of the department oforrections do you believe that to be true or not? true he's he doesn't work
Chair
Unverified
3:00:34
for the board of corrections our correct now he works for the governor and if there are any overlapping you know he tours our facilities at time to time and as as a member of the governor's staff he's entitled
to tour our facilities uhuu it would be very I mean we wouldn't ever board of
Speaker 432
3:00:58
corrections would never try to say a member of the governor's office could just to be brief let me try to frame it
Senator John Payton
Unverified
3:01:05
in a way where you can answer it who do you perceive is at the helm of the department oforrections Secretary Wallace both of you agree in that OK
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:01:18
thank you Representative rose you recognize thank you Mr chairir. Mr.watson, I just had a a follow up
question on something that you said in your earlier testimony I think it was in reference to and I wasn't sure if it was to three sites specifically or if it was a combination of expansions at different locations and add additionally a side or two but some other former fashion to getting
somewhere to 2500 or3,500 beds you said more or less whatever it takes to get this done the fastest that's kind of the concept is find the solution that gets it done the fastest we need beds yes and I think corporately most are gonna be in agreement that there is a problem with the number of of prisoners we have in the places to put them overcrowding the cost on the state and the counties for housing prisoners and county jails and the
inability maybe to effectively implement justice and imprison violent criminals etc etc. those common talking points I think we mostly broadly agree on when you said get this done the fastest do you have an adequate timeline that you could walk through of site location, the process of getting that done, purchasing building staffing working with the community what that timeline would look like ga in my two cents' worth is the
fastest way we could add beds would be to first and simultaneously work on expanding North central that's only500 beds we also need to look at and when we talk about beds keep in mind the word beds covers a multitude of types of beds we don't just need prison beds we also need community corrections and other facilities that make up some of those beds and one of the things
the board was considering back in 2022 was a facility for community corrections granted it was only300 beds but that300 buds would be300 people that aren't in the county jail backup and so we need to look at that you know we've we lost the facility in Washington County. You know, I'm from Fort Smith. I can tell you also when it comes to location part of the issue and and I can tell you from driving from Fortsmith to our facilities there aren't any on my part of
the state or in my part of the state they're all south they're all central Arkansas and east in northwest Arkansas is the fastest growing. I know Benton and Washington County are predicted to double in population in the next I think less than 10 years we're in need of some of those types of facilities in in western and northwestern Arkansas. and and I can tell you that Sebastian County per capita I think probably sends more people in the department of corrections of any county in the state because we have very aggressive
and effective prosecutor there that I think but as far as the timeline you know I I think I would have to defer to bennie on that because he saw what happened and he worked through the Malvern facility I've not been actively involved in the construction of a new facility in benny Ha. usually takes from the time the site's
Speaker 454
3:04:52
picked to the time we open up three years minimum
Chair
Unverified
3:04:59
and that's not maximum that's that's minimum I don't believe we can get it done any quicker than that if we were turned loose all but we because of where we're at now we're not making we're not getting it done and you know a lot of the criteria that was talked about today a good example if if some a lot of people would come to CalicoRock and tour our facility it's it's not near an interstate probably 100 and some miles from interstate
it's not near a trauma center there's a lot of things that that site is similar to the site in Franklin County. and it works for us we have excellent staff
Speaker 432
3:05:44
there yes we had Grant Harden getway which is the first time somebody walked away from that facility in35 years. but there are excellent staff and they do a good job and so
Chair
Unverified
3:06:02
but it's only 90 it's overcapacity right now by about sey or 80 maybe a little more around 900 something inmates there
Speaker 482
3:06:12
now and but it does work follow up Mr chairir quickly thank
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:06:17
you Mrwatson is kind of want to give you
a chance to to come back to this kind of the genesis of of my question was you saying this would be the fastest way to get this done or you want to see
the fastest way to get this done what is it that makes your proposal or that concept the fastest way to get it done because
a lot of the work is done at North Central the architectural and engineering work is done and we already have everything in place there to bring new staff on because we have personnel there that that'd be the fastest way to add500 beds. The faster way than building a fac Community corrections facilities of might be 200 or300
in in various places that are where they're needed around the state again it's not going to be the the one band-aid that cures it all but it takes away from the county jae backup you know however many
Speaker 454
3:07:18
100 beds we can add 11 of the things is important to say when she brought
Chair
Unverified
3:07:23
up Marshall Arkansas that had made an application in our document that we put out for people to be interested or communities to be interested in some prison institutions was
also ACC centers and they don't take the ground of the amount of ground because they're only 200 me300 inmates they don't take the ground footprint that a prison does and that's what marshall was interested in the marshall was never interested or could have staffed even I don't I think they could have staffed maybe a larger facility but but that's what they were interested something like 2 or300 inmates so when they say that uhmarshall applied they didn't apply for 1000 bed prison and they sure didn't apply for
a300 bed prison they applied for the an ACC center so I think there's a little bit of mix up there from no one what Marshall was asking for think was
Speaker 455
3:08:15
chair I'd like to hop back in if if you get a moment get back in the queue please senator King
Chair
Unverified
3:08:23
you recognize us thank you Mr chairir. So you know like I said back
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:08:30
in 2017 I filed the bill to address this overcrowding. I mean this
overcrowding's been happening for basically a long time but it's really exploded starting back to 2011 and you know just like inRogers when I asked you, you know, I've always advocated in 2017 when you know, coming up with a plan that a lot of these people didn't want to find, but if you increase and this is why RSA in the budget is so important because it determines the direction. Corrections has stayed 8 % of the budget since I went in.8% this last time. I said in 17 said this correction should be 10% of the budget. If we'd
increase 2 more% since 2013 or whenever, rection would have received $1.4 billion more dollars. That's how important 1% change in a budget goes in looking 10 years down the road.1.4 billion we would be in this mess. But back to calico rockck that's where as you said the fastest way to get there, Mror fi ri shut down calico rockck. I mean we've already got everything there that he shut down calico rockck. We could expand it525 beds much faster,
much more economical there. you know when you look at the inmate population as we've seen, you know,4 counties contribute half our inmates to incarceration. so if you take out pulaski County which always has wrightsville out here, Benton waston Sebastian County. you know we need to build the facilities in bitton Washington County because if you look over a 50 year period, just the cost of transporting prisoners alone, you know and the other thing is too and look at our needs that Mrorfiri didn't look at is an intake facility
. I mean all the population is is growing in northwest Arkansas. I mean we're looking at thehird district next time may only be three counties. and so that thing that they never looked at profiri oh here we go senator
Speaker 488
3:10:22
King if you can finish the question Yeah
Speaker 489
3:10:30
I know how this goes when you get facts so the
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:10:33
question is in looking at this thing, corrections is gonna
have to have their budget increased dramatically. it should have happened this line if we don't do that we are never going to solve this problem and the second part is why did Mr Porfiri shut downcalico rockck expansion which was economical what do you know? He won't show up again you'd have to ask him
Chair
Unverified
3:10:57
that question and as far as funding from the department of corrections is up to the governor and to this legislative body we we try to do the best we can with the money you all give us
Speaker 492
3:11:11
and that's the only way I can I can answer that question and that's what
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:11:16
I was saying the overcrowding that was happening in 1516 was because of lack of money going towards you guys and I tried to correct that. So anyway, thank you Mr Chairman. I don't have any more questions the main
Chair
Unverified
3:11:29
thing that needs to be said here every governor has given us some money we've increased bed space with almost every governor I've served I've been on the board 26 years every governor has gave us some
money for some expansion not new facilities governor Sanders dad was the first one that gave us money for a brand new facility at Malbourne but we got money for expansion at CalicoRock places in pine bluff from every governor we've added
Speaker 468
3:12:02
some beds it's just we can't keep adding patchwork to places that we can't harre staff that's the problem is is we have to go somewhere
where we can harre staff you know I I can't go without saying that you know I appreciate this governor trying to build us beds and if I had if I was asked the question what about31000s I really don't care if it's built on a mountain and I don't care how many we have to have beds
Speaker 448
3:12:46
senator King before you jump in I know there's a cost factor there I get that but we have to start having beds listensten I made a statement we have 10,000 absconders that are not
Speaker 432
3:12:59
coming in we we we catch them we bring that number down every so month and then it goes back up another thing that we've got facing us in the
Speaker 468
3:13:10
future is protect Arkansas actct when it was introduced and passed
it starts dealing with our repeat offenders and it should it should deal with our repeat offenders the problem is we're not gonna have a place to put them and that cycle has not started yet. but it will so I'll I'll wait for a question now itpresentative wooten Thank you Mr Chairman first of all chairman
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
3:13:49
magnus and memberwatson I I want to commend y'all you've you've been an excellent job. I've seen the prison system and the changes that have been made and it's outstanding with a limited finances that you had I have seen it from the standpoint of being a trooper and having to go into two riots one itummins and one at Tucker as a result of overcrowding so I know and then I served to stand as
DFfa director and I have never seen such a disaster as has been perpetrated on the people of Arkansas relative to this3,000 bed prison now to my question Chairman Magnus do you remember the conversation that we had in the lobby out here about four years ago you're gonna remind me it's may have been with age I start snaaring the timeframe him down but you told me then
that we needed 2000 beds and that we needed a unit300 so we could incarcerate parolee violations of scoundrels and thugs drug users they come in they come into the facility and to for parole violations or for parole review and they come in and they're home on drugs and your people have to let them go
Speaker 492
3:15:24
is that true we have we bought we built a facility we we
Chair
Unverified
3:15:31
bought a women's no excuse me a juvenile facility atbatesville batesville did not want to run it anymore uhndependence County I should say and we bought it remodeled it now we've got 175 bed facility there for pro violators that we bring in for
90 days we also have one at at the next to the Malvern unit Oomega and both of those function well I sure wouldn't be against having another one they the one thing about proe if you can studies will show you that if when they are not complying with their their parole requirements the best thing you can do is instead of wait and wait and wait till they've got so far down the road that you can have no other choice but send them to
prison is get a hold of them put them in a facility and give them 90 days hopefully they'll still have a job when they get out but put it back out after 90 days and that's
Speaker 482
3:16:37
served pretty well we started that somewhere 22 years ago when Oomega thank you Mr. Watson I
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
3:16:45
read in the paper you're proposal have you presented that to the full board or are you holding on to that or what's the status of the
proposal and if you would share what you felt we needed to do pretty
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:17:01
much what I've said today we we need to find a way to add beds the
fastest whether it's north centralunorreions and then however much of a prison however many beds the legislature is willing to fund because as Benie pointed out you know things are are fairly the growth is fairly predictable now and it will be for the next
4 or5 years but it's expected that that's when the Protect Arkansas Act is gonna have a a a a start having a greater impact on our prison population and we need to get ready for that so we can't just fix the problem
Lee Watson
Unverified
3:17:41
we have today we need to start planning for that you know or more
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
3:17:48
years5 to10 years thank you thank you both of you again for your leadership and direction that the corrections Mr Chairman
regardless of how the senate feels I still think that we need to let them know over there and Mroy that he is either going to come over here or we're gonna take his pay away from him and I don't care how the senators feel about it but it's a slap in the face of every one of you and you devoted not to subpoena him to come in here and that does not sit very well with me and I know a lot of you don't care how things sit with me but that's fine too thank you Mr
Chairman I understand the concern and have similar feelings if you gentlemen will
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
3:18:34
be sure you're getting a little relaxed oh pull your microphones to you and you can still be relaxed getting a little bit blight
Chair
Unverified
3:18:43
representing Matt Brown famousmous chair speaking of the
Speaker 150
3:18:54
fall upon the comment on planning for the future. what is the current
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
3:19:00
backlog in the county jails right now as we sit here today I'd say
Speaker 468
3:19:05
right around 2200 I I don't check it daily anymore but it it'll be hovering right around 2200 backed up in the county jail fought Mr chair so even if we added these500 beds atallicoRock that's
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
3:19:18
not really making a dent to the current backlog we have right now when we're already at 109% capacity I think y'all said earlier so I mean wouldn't it make more sense to build a new facility of3,000 beds regardless of where
it's built but wouldn't make sense to build a facility where we can start you know getting capacity for the future instead of
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:19:41
another stopgap measure what we've seen for the last year and a half is the efforts toward this3,000 bed facility have derailed the plans to add a500 bed facility or500 beds at Calico rockck some community corrections facilities that may add up to 1000 and then serious work on a long
term whether it's 1000 with the design so that it can be expanded as the funds are available but anyway if if if we could get about3,000 bed facility built faster than
we can do any of those things I'd be 100% for it Richard brown I
Speaker 432
3:20:18
have a different answer to that that it depends
Chair
Unverified
3:20:20
on whether you built that3,000 bed facility in segments if you build it in segments it would serve maybe the same person who's position as adding calico rock.
but if you try to build the whole facility as a whole we're gonna be in a lot more trouble in the county's gonna be in a lot more trouble waiting on that facility to open and but if you but if you build it in segments which I talked to the van Ey and the contractor and stuff about doing it in segments and that's why it needs to be
Speaker 468
3:21:02
built to make some beds come online sooner well I
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
3:21:06
mean I don't care how it's built if it's in phases or what. I mean my my my concern is we literally have child rapists being let out of
Speaker 157
3:21:14
the pen because we don't have enough room. why can't we put these people in jail and
Speaker 455
3:21:19
keep them there to protect societyir it we
Speaker 468
3:21:21
the board of corrections doesn't let people out do we vote on EPA to let them out 90 days early yes we have and done it for years but then they are reviewed by
the parole board. The board of corrections does does not vote to put somebody out on the street that's not our job never has been our job now we have voted to move their eligibility 90 days early because at the request of the county jails or or whatever may be if you go back in history I have no I I didn't vote for all the EPAs I didn't vote for them but I can tell you right now that that it's gonna it's gonna really hurt
if we did an EPA right now we have two on the books one is 90 days which covers everyone and we have one that is a one year moves eligibility date one year and it has to be 100% nonviolent very restrictive who will qualify for that one year EPA. but then that ghost and and I I wish Mr McCasson here a parole boarder because I'm not trying to throw them under the bus but
then it goes to the parole board to review those names to decide whether to
Speaker 482
3:22:39
put them out on the street that's fact well I
Speaker 417
3:22:43
don't think that my question insinuated that you were voting to let people out and I don't mean to insinuate that if you took it that
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
3:22:50
way but my concern is it's just that I'm hearing y'all say we got a plan for the future but I think calico rockck at best is a stopgap when we need to do something that's actually going to fix the
Speaker 432
3:23:01
problem for the near for the future. only reason I don't think calico rocks just complete stopgap is because of
the type of facility it's been and type of people we've had we've never had who my whole tenure on the board certain prisons all the time has had trouble staffing people we've never had a problem with calico rockck never. it's always been never been over5% so I don't look atallico rockck necessarily stopgap is more as a do a viable facility if you tried to turn but that's my my opinion thank you Mr one thing'd like to add regarding the EA
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:23:39
that has not been exercised since January of of 2023. so for 2.5 years the the EPA has not been used and traditionally before that going back to 1986 it was used to alleviate overcrowding. and that was the the only tool in the tool bag if you will for overcrowding thank you
Lee Watson
Unverified
3:23:59
soenator King you re thank you Mr Chair to follow up
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:24:10
Mr. magnus chairman Magnus we've talked about this Mr.watson you know it's just like
in simple construction is why the site location for so important if your s so location you got to go to Fort Smith and you got to go revamp these water systems you're talking more time, more money. if you're s so prep is 250 million versus50 million, that means less beds.body in construction common sense can understand that so that's why this site location is so important that if you pick a site location that's going that s so prep and the road
structure, you know,96 there's grass growing up in the roads. it's not going to handle thousands of concrete trucks and construction. I mean, Mr. Magnus we go back we you remember Highway65 when Missouri expanded it from Branson and did that. there were4 or5 construction companies went bankrupt because they did not do the site location and understanding the rock and everything that's the big thing. So I'm just saying whatever site location we all agree we got to increased beds, increase them
faster. but we also have to look down the road if corrections does not receive a more percentage of the budget and that's including if revenues keep going up and we don't go into a budget shortfall or downtime which I've experienced. these things I was in DC these ideas that we're going to keep getting bailouts that's happened in t0 and that. I talked to Senator Bozeman and he said don't expect any more bailouts. so if we go back to the old days of shortfalls not having enough money it's even worse. but looking at our time and you're going out Mr. magnus is if we
like this last budget corrections was only 8% of the budget. If it'd been 10% that your corrections would have got 130 million more. Well you can do more with money. so in the long term of us, if I get another4 years, I'll be gone.5 years from now,6 years now we won't see 1000 prisoners up there we're going to be out of $1 billion and we're not I mean look at Alabama and Utah so if if corrections would have this is what is so important these guys rubber stamp RSa at
the end of the year and it has got to have more operating money because we're in this situation because the legislatures haven't been budgeting enough money
Speaker 492
3:26:25
that's that's not our call now when you talk about Utah I toured that facility I understand why they their
Chair
Unverified
3:26:31
cost was what it was I I I kind of get what what happened to them and rather their cost was so high but there again how much money we receive is up to the governor and up to
you all that's right and we we you know the comments was made a while ago and I meant to bring it up when when Sen Bryant brought up about the ACA the department of Arkansas Department of Corrections is in the top three echelon of ACA and
Speaker 422
3:27:07
we also do it cheaper in 24 than any other state in
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:27:15
the union no question you guys are one of the most efficient economically operating prison systems in our
Speaker 496
3:27:21
country. no question and we don't get credit for
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:27:24
that no you don't get credit for that and I agree with you but I'm just saying on the site prep, what is so critical about this it's just common construction math. If you allocating750 million and your site prep if we've seen these figures out with Fortsmith the 240 million to revamp their system. Maybe you drill down and get water. OK, fine. but the site prep is 250 million that only leaves you500 million
to build beds. If you're taking750 million and your site prep is50 million that leaves700 million to build more beds. That is why it's so critical to pick the right location I'm done it's critical of to
Speaker 492
3:27:56
pick a location but also some of the numbers you you come up with is
Chair
Unverified
3:28:01
is pull them out of the thin air I don't know what it's gonna cost ok we're gonna we're gonna
wrap here in a minute I've got Representative Kavanaugh then Representative beatty
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
3:28:17
thank you Mr Chair talking about expansion is expansion an option at Grimmes or McPherson. ma' and why is that because we
Speaker 492
3:28:30
can't staff them you can't get enough people to staff I think we're at I got the number here somewhere I
Speaker 432
3:28:37
was looking at it a couple of days ago and we just can't at McPherson right now and Grimes
Chair
Unverified
3:28:47
we're 2,369 inmates and we're running right at50% or maybe it's down to45% or something like that in staffing and it's been that way prior toOVId and we still can't we can't we in fact we're doing stuff at Newport we don't normally do we're having trying to get people hired there we're doing our training right there we're doing our academy at Grimes and stuff to try to get people and why is it that you can't staff there
the people there and that that county independence it draws from trying to think what a county I know it well Newport's inn but Independence is next to do what yeah jackson Jackson County we just have trouble there and we just don't can't staff them thank you Representative rose you recognize thank you sir
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:29:49
Mrwatson I just wanted to to follow up on our conversation a minute ago kind of the the the sales pitch to solve the problem was the500 bed expansion in north central and then I think when I was listening to you and Chairman magnus 200 to300 bed community correction facilities several of them yes it'd be 8 to10 roughly just to get to that 3000 bed number
if they're 200 to300 it would take 8 to10 to plus the500 to be a
Chair
Unverified
3:30:28
recommendation to build that many AccC beds and what we call ACC beds really not AccC beds anymore it's all part of AdC but no sir we would not need that or want that many beds and an AcC facility and I think what I'd what I'd
Lee Watson
Unverified
3:30:44
suggested was as many as3 or4 which would be you know roughly 1000 beds you know if we
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:30:50
could find locations where we have the need
for for all of those so I think what the what I was trying to get
to I think we're already discussed we've got a 1700 bed backlog or 1700 prisoner backlog and based on the projections we talked about last month by 2031 we'll have roughly3,000 prisoner population growth here in Arkansas so we're looking at 1700 that we already don't have room for plus another3000 in five years and this is why I go
back to like I I love hearing options and alternatives but 2 to300 beds here or500 beds here doesn't get us to3,000. it doesn't get us to4,700 and so I just come back to timeline
and solutions I'm I'm happy to hear them but I haven't heard them yet well and my point there is those are
things that could be brought online faster no they're not the total solution and we are going to need a large facility as as Bennny mentioned as I mentioned if it could begin as
if we could get the funding for a 1000 bed facility. get that built and then funding to expand it and and move that as rapidly as possible because you're right in5 to10 years we're we're gonna need the3000 beds but just as importantly we need some of these other types of beds too and and the community corrections or the anyway they're all they all fall under corrections we move them over from the community correction side but we need beds both for people that are sentenced directly from
drug courts and also for parole violators who we know aren't going to come in for 90 days and then go back out. and especially for those types of prisoners they are beds those types of facilities keep them in their community where hopefully they can get out and and you know reintegrate better quick follow up Mr chair get back in
Speaker 240
3:32:50
the queue I may or may not take youpresentative beatty chair and committee member thank you Mr chairir. I I guess
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:32:59
my question's for board memberber Watson I I recall your letter I read your letter. it hadn had a lot of conjecture in there as far as what you would like to see in pro and in proposals that that that you drafted to send to the legislature. My question is and and I'm I'm only gonna ask this question because chairman magnus mentioned that would not be the recommendation beenen here almost5 years, a little over5 years. and I haven't , I don't think I've ever
heard a a recommendation or a request from corrections to add bids since I've been here. I know there have been discussions about that but I've never heard anything directly from the department on the addition of beds I I haven't heard that there was a plan or or anything else within your department to add the capacity one thing I will say is I agree with Senator King it's going to take more money on corrections and I think every one of us in this room that voted for the ProtE Act knew that at that
point and also at every session when we come in and we add additional offenses and additional time served we're we're just exponent ial ly increasing the problem. So my question have you ever asked for additional beds and made a request to the legislature and been denied and secondly if you ever made a request to the legislature for anything that you needed at corrections and been denied well as the somewhat new guy on the
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:34:28
board even though I've been on the board for5 years and and working
with Benny he's told me that those requests have always been from him to the governor so from the board to the
Speaker 492
3:34:42
governor and then because if she's not gonna give it to him to the governor yeah if she's
Speaker 432
3:34:47
not gonna put it in her balanced budget to I say her because we have a her right now because that's not fair because she has tried to give us beds that's obvious OKok but
Speaker 526
3:34:56
but in the past we've tried we've requested more beds and I you the setting here and thinking
Speaker 468
3:35:05
you've been here5 years you say I've been here 26 and I know that we've requested beds and we have gotten beds we'd never have gotten a new one except for governor Huuckabee at Malford that's the only new one but we just before I got on the board they finished Newport which came to the governor but the bottom line is is we have added beds we had a facility
close in pine bluff and governor beebee gave us the money to to remodel it and put it back online so we got in beds from other governors we just have not gotten a big jump to solve the problem because we keep growing at 2% if you grow 20 eight years of a governor's term but he gives you 1000 guess what you're in a hole 1000 and that's just the way it's
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:36:09
been working unfortunately and it's really just been an exponential problem since we removed that EPA from you where you where you couldn't release those prisoners out and free up bed space to take over some of the overcrowding that we're having in our counties that right now our our local law enforcement and our judges we can't affect true the ju judicial side in our counties because there's there's not capacity so we're all hurting at that level p re s ent ative beatty we've
Speaker 468
3:36:39
had as many requests from law enforcement to do the EPAs if we have not to do it we've had more that's you but right now if we did an EPA right now we were looking at the numbers the other day with our consultant we could release600 inmates on the 90 day not the one year but on the 90 day and that's the one that is kind of like troublesome because it
there may be a few classes of inmates like murder or something like that that doesn't get out but that's the one the 90 days almost covers everybody like an armed robber somebody that commits armed robbery but the one year EPA it has to be total nonviolent but we right now if we did just a 90 day my assumption the other day from talking to consultant I think she told me600
Speaker 432
3:37:34
inmates if we could do it right now it saves600 beds but keep in mind with those EPAs
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:37:42
those are inmates that are gonna get out at the end of that 90 day period or one year period regardless so probably didn't make it smell any better. I mean, I don't think anybody likes the idea of that but it's it's been the only tool in the tool kit for since 1986. so but so anyway ok I'm I'm I'm not one to overly want to defend the EPA because like bennny it it bothers me
but at the same time when you realize this person's gonna get out in 90 days anyway and and if the process takes longer it might just be30 days or 20 days but
again that's a bed where you can bring prisoners in from the counties also the
Speaker 432
3:38:27
EPA got to be non it was not it when you do it every 90 days it just got to be releasing
Speaker 468
3:38:33
everybody 90 days if it wasn't the emergency that it was designed to do to release when you've got to I've been on
Speaker 432
3:38:44
the board when we got up to3,200 people backed up
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:38:48
in the county jail. last comment Mr chairir, just kind of balance the power and if you need funding ask for funding Where does funding where is funding approved but we've heard we've heard no request so I'm telling you if if that's an issue balance of power ask thank you good point
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
3:39:17
right, I've got 2 left on here we're not gonna take any more after that I've got Ccrawford andRos are you still in? you got one more question get yours out of the way thank you a minute I got the wrong one but did I get
Speaker 532
3:39:33
you? You got me. OK, good. I appreciate that thank you want to give you each an
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:39:40
opportunity to comment. we were talking about the backlog of beds and the prison population growth
goes beyond the backlog I'm sure you're aware and we could pull out different numbers think the latest number I heard is 169,000 unserved or unpursued warrants in the state if we don't do something it's not just the prisoners we don't have somewhere to place that are already it's the criminals that aren't even being arrested and aren't being locked up we're implementing theE Act we're trying to hold the violent worst offenders off our streets I'd just like for your your
commentary on how do we how do we how do we handle that and how
Speaker 432
3:40:26
do we protect our Kansans do what governor Sanders question let's build a prison
Speaker 533
3:40:30
thank you y'all get just a little closer the
Speaker 432
3:40:33
people watching online can't hear you watch governor Sanders is recommending to build a prison thank you Mr Chair. not gonna get any
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:40:43
argument out of me on that point. Rep Crawford you recognize Thank
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
3:40:48
you I'm up here you how many nonviolent do we
have in our prisons right now do you know? I gave a number the other day Ro
Speaker 468
3:41:00
ger s and I need to revisit that to make sure I give you all the right number. I gave itRogers it was probably about48 and
Speaker 432
3:41:10
I don't remember which side it fell on pretty close to fifty/50 but I also know that our some of our staff was
Speaker 468
3:41:19
trying to research that again and found out that that might not be correct if you want me to I'll
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
3:41:27
get you that number and get and get it to the
chair and thank you for that one more question what is your thought about possibly splitting the population and looking at a mental health facility I know you've heard that argument. what what do you think? I think
Speaker 432
3:41:45
the almost all everywhere in United States
of the prison system has also become a mental institutions and we get it all the time now I will tell you that in my opinion which I'm sure not a doctor I'm farthest from that sometimes on on the free world they medicate them too much we find that quite often we bring them into prison they might be under6 4 different medications and then we pair it down to one or two and they they operate fine but
that's just my opinion because so what happens is when that person comes off that medication has mental health medications more than likely something's gonna happen and it's not usually good and they end up
Speaker 539
3:42:36
with us and some of our facilities for instance Can you get closer
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:42:40
for instance Malvern basically when when you talk about inmates and you talk about beds we have inmates that are would look like a wing at a nursing home because they're elderly they may have
dementia they have all sorts of health problems we have medical wings you know we we are hope to have a grand opening here soon on our our new facility here in LittleRock that's for women mainly for there's basically two wings they're for inmates that are pregnant or have just given birth and then the other wing is for women with
serious health problems that basically need nursing home type care so and that's another example it's
Speaker 448
3:43:25
only 150 bed facility but that's another
Speaker 468
3:43:27
example of us adding beds everywhere we have a chance when we do that it does raise our cost so when I said we were cheapest in the nation I said in 2024 I don't know what it'll be in 2025 but when we do that it does raise your costs because those smaller facilities do cost more
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
3:43:47
to operate. OK, one more and I'm through. how much are you guys utilizing the reentry facilities that are
privately owned across the state that are not full we
Speaker 432
3:44:00
try to use all we can. there's I heard that testimony the other day and the gentleman was here I don't see him now it was here from hidden Creek and he'll tell you right now we've got more inmates in his beds but we have a couple of roadblocks of that
Speaker 468
3:44:14
those problem we run out of money and there again Representative beatty made it clear we asked for more money but we're gonna have to have more money if we're
gonna keep those beds filled number one and and number two it people got a understand about reentry it's not that they just can pick an inmate up that manmate can be chosen then it has to be approved by the parole board to be able to go to reentry it just is there's a process because at reentry they're
Speaker 495
3:44:48
getting out you know we got we're talking about EPA well that inmate that goes to
reentry getting out of prison early 16 months early so 18 months early yeah he has to go to reentry part of that time but he's also getting out early so but if our
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
3:45:09
prisons are overloaded if50% or less are nonviolent I think we need to rethink what we're
doing in our prison population ma'am I I've been saying that for about5 to10
Speaker 432
3:45:27
years mean we agree I'm not sure that's the reason Mr Watson now is even bringing up the our treatment centers type stuff it they're important they do a
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
3:45:44
good job thank you that was the last question thank you gentlemen for
being here we appreciate the difficult job you do Mrwattsson I complimented you publicly in the media and I will again thank you for
thinking maybe outside the box not not through with you yet outside the box and I and I appreciate your comment that you'd like to have a little bit longer time to look at something before you send it on down the road and I say that
here a lot we we we rushed too much stuff through especially when s or hman magnus involved you've got you've had a difficult job and you've done it a number of years and we thank you because we don't we don't think about the stuff you have to
every day and I know this is a lot of passion on on the issues where this is at but it's a difficult situation that a lot of people were in so thank y'all for being here for the for the citizens group M Cardenas or if Mr Watson I didn't see if he's still here do y'all wanna come back and make a brief statement if not
that's fine but ok yeah I see Adam back there if you wanna
and again I appreciate all of it that testified today staying for the entire meeting we we appreciate your input Mr. Adam Watson and Natalie Cardenas you
are recognized to wrap up so I took
Speaker 545
3:47:27
a couple quick notes which I'll just run
Adam Watson
Unverified
3:47:30
through a couple of things that we can address
Speaker 48
3:47:35
from the other witnesses comments so to mislaidlaw's comments about you know she realized that the roads were better from a different entry you know there's emails that she sent were on July8th and July10th. she had an inperson meeting with Joe Porfiri on July12th and after that meeting there was no more dissent from TSs about this project and as you saw it was under contract a
few weeks later. so our question would remain if there was communication to her that indicated that there was better access from a different way why weren't those emails produced in our foia request because we've not seen that you know I think we got offtra from our specific complaint today which is's understandable because there's a lot of topics going around that are worthy of discussion about this prison about the prison system overall, etc.
but we were under the impression that we would get to the heart of more of the issues and our complaint and I don't want to be too hard on the committee for this for sure but I didn't see a lot of evidence presented to dispute any of our claims as to the hardening and the design contract
I think a slide that we showed was referenced about the decrease in price that was not just do that was not just due to ACA minimums that was a design change from a three wing facility with one wing to house maximum security one for medium security and one for minimum security. The current design contract proposed is for 2500 dormitory stylele beds and500 double bunks.
so I don't know how that aligns with the state needs but I want everybody to be aware that that's the type of facility that we're looking at when it comes to harden outside of that and probably to my earlier comment about the intent of us being here being to get answers ' m disappointed that a number of our upper chamber of the legislature were unwilling to even issue a subpoena to ask a governor's office
representative to be here to answer questions you know to the comments about who runs the DOC and who's in charge I think those are questions that Mrorfiri needs to answer but what's clear is that when committees of our legislature call for a representative of the DOC Mr Porfiri shows up to testify. Outside of that I think we've covered everything on my notes you think you'd be here
and I will comment on one reason I
gave latitude as you said we got off on some other things it's all interconnected information is what this was about today what most of the audience is concerned about is their immediate need the more information the legislature has the more we can understand the issue y'all have brought that before we get that out of news articles social media and all that so I hope there's more interest in that we'll see where this goes a lot of information I
Speaker 48
3:51:07
think you're absolutely right and look that's why we we opened
with we don't want this conversation to end today. I think there is much more that should be discussed and brought up about this issue both regard with regard to the ranklin County site and whatever we're going to do with that if anything but also regard with regard to the prison system as a whole so I hope this isn't a closed matter. We
thank you for being here today and for all in the audience that made the trip and took
your day off and all we greatly appreciate that thank you members that have stayed other ones I realized had to go
but this is all live stream you can go back and replay it too if you want to
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
3:51:50
anything else Mr cochair I'd just like to thank everyone that was here today that that made statements I think it brought a lot of light to what we discussed and did not know about during the session because some of us knew nothing about what was happening and had no idea and I think it brought up a lot of light to what we were thinking was possibility of what it could be possibility still don't know a whole lot but we'll find out more I'm sure in the
future but thank you guys for coming and everyone that testified and everyone that asked questions and showed up today thank you with that we are adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve the October 21, 2024, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Consideration of a Motion to Authorize Chairs to Approve Special Expenses Incurred by the Committee
D. Discussion of Citizens’ Complaint Regarding Franklin County Prison Proposal [Exhibits D1-D3]
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — JOINT PERFORMANCE REVIEW (JPR), Sep 9, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B - JPR Draft Minutes 10-21-2024 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D1 - Citizen Complaint - Franklin County Prison | Exhibit | 6 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D2 - DOC-Site-Assessment-1 | Exhibit | 49 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D3- Citizen Complaints Timeline | Exhibit | 15 | Official source ↗ |
| Handout D1-FCO Suggested Committee Questions | Exhibit | 6 | Official source ↗ |
| Handout D2 - FCO Exhibit List | Exhibit | 5 | Official source ↗ |
| Handout D3 - JPR Deck | Exhibit | 152 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Terry Rice Chair
Unverified
Senator John Payton
Unverified
Speaker 39
Speaker 40
Adam Watson
Unverified
Speaker 48
Speaker 54
Speaker 56
Representative Jim Wooten
Unverified
Speaker 61
Corey Cox
Unverified
Speaker 68
Speaker 72
Speaker 75
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
Speaker 78
Speaker 79
Speaker 86
Speaker 83
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
Speaker 96
Speaker 100
Speaker 3
Speaker 103
Speaker 108
Speaker 109
Speaker 111
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
Speaker 67
Speaker 121
Speaker 126
Speaker 2
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
Speaker 117
Chair
Unverified
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Speaker 157
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
Speaker 38
Representative Robin Lundstrum
Unverified
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
Speaker 201
Speaker 185
Speaker 210
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Speaker 216
Speaker 248
Speaker 252
Speaker 192
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
Speaker 287
Speaker 224
Speaker 92
Speaker 289
Speaker 228
Representative Frances Cavenaugh
Unverified
Speaker 316
Speaker 204
Speaker 138
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
Speaker 200
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 355
Speaker 359
Speaker 254
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
Speaker 259
Speaker 218
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Speaker 373
Speaker 374
Representative Mark Perry
Unverified
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 361
Speaker 257
Speaker 364
Speaker 240
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 410
Speaker 414
Lee Watson
Unverified
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
Speaker 454
Speaker 432
Speaker 463
Speaker 327
Speaker 482
Speaker 455
Speaker 488
Speaker 489
Speaker 492
Speaker 468
Speaker 448
Speaker 150
Speaker 417
Speaker 422
Speaker 496
Speaker 526
Speaker 532
Speaker 533
Speaker 539
Speaker 495
Speaker 545