‘Why should we trust you?': Sen. King challenges lack of details in prison plan
In the Arkansas Senate, King was the most vocal opponent of the Franklin County prison that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her allies wished to build. However, the answers are non-existent when seeking clarification or details for the 3,000-bed prison project.
'I don't care if you're Bryan King, the governor, my brother, or whoever, if you can't answer questions or be truthful about this project… why should we trust you going forward?,' King said. 'I can't imagine someone out there trying to build a facility or a home for you and not provide details or specifics. Just give you a price. When you wake up one morning after a weekend, they say it's double. They don't have any details of why. So, our state budget is alarming to me right now. Spending is going up, and revenues are going down."
King's district covers Madison and Caroll counties, most of Boone and Newton counties, and parts of Johnson and Franklin counties. Initially, he and other representatives were only informed of the prison site hours before the public announcement around Halloween 2024. Since then, information from the state's corrections department and the governor's office has been scant.
'This isn't just a Franklin County issue. This is a state issue,' King said. 'The governor's idea is to build a mega-prison. Expanding other prisons would be more cost-effective, but they don't want that. I've been in construction. I haven't built a prison, but these prison companies, once they get in for $50 million, we're going to be in it for whatever.'
King met with interested citizens March 10 at the Blue Lion in Fort Smith to discuss the latest developments and what's next.
Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy) and Rep. Lane Jean (R-Magnolia) co-sponsored Senate Bill 354, which would appropriate up to $750 million to the Arkansas Department of Corrections for costs associated with prison construction. An emergency clause allows the bill to become effective July 1, 2025, the start of the next fiscal year.
As King and others pointed out, there are no designs, and the only estimate given was in an email obtained via FOIA that the firm in charge of coordinating the construction of the prison estimates it would cost $1.2 billion.
'Did they figure out how to get there?,' King said. 'You may be looking at 600 to 800 workers — thousands of concrete, trucks, cranes. The road structure is one layer and not ready to accept that level of traffic. I went to the Highway Department and asked if they planned to do any work before the construction. They say they're not.
'The scale at which they're moving to build this prison without a plan should alarm anybody.'
The joint budget committee is meeting at 9 .m. on Thursday, and if the state can proceed with the prison's design and construction, its decision may determine the fate of the appropriation.
'Call your representatives. If you have ties to others, call them,' King said. 'Nothing about this deal is even close to working.'
King drafted a plan to have the state work with the counties and other existing state prisons to expand those facilities to meet the governor's demand for more prison beds. King said the governor's office scoffed at his idea and said it wouldn't work.
'They think for some reason this mega-prison is going to solve their backlog,' King said. 'The reality is when you look at the whole picture of every state, building more prisons isn't going to do it. We need to reduce crime. We need more public safety officers, and it seems that the state legislators aren't even willing to do that.'
The governor's office didn't reply to any of King's emails about his plan. Still, in response to King's Jan. 8 news conference, Sanders released a statement that said, 'Placing the burden of long-term incarceration on county jails is a failed strategy and a disservice to communities and inmates alike.'
However, the state already has entered partnership agreements with Mississippi and Philips county jails in September 2024. As of Feb. 12, the Department of Corrections was experiencing a delay in moving additional people into the Phillips County Jail because it lacked a food vendor to feed the prisoners to do the job for less than $5 per inmate per day.
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: No plans, no transparency: Arkansas senator slams state's prison project
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