Prison board delays vote on closing NSP

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller agreed Wednesday to wait for more information on budget and safety issues before deciding whether to block closure of Nevada State Prison.

In return, Director of Corrections Howard Skolnik agreed not to move ahead with shutting the prison before the Board of Prison Commissioners meets again July 13.

Masto said she needed more information to make a decision after Skolnik said safety of employees and the community were his focus in seeking to close NSP - safety issues that will get worse beginning July 1 when his officers begin taking furloughs.

Furloughs, he said, will effectively reduce his staff of 2,600 by 417 officers a week. To leave NSP open would result in more inmate lockdowns, cutting visitation and inmate programs and closing some towers. The increased tensions would lead to violence, he said.

"The bottom line is we, as a department, do not have the staff we need to operate and when, in fact, we implement furloughs July 1, we will find ourselves almost 5 percent farther behind," Skolnik said.

The alternative, he told the secretary of state, attorney general and governor, who make up the prison board, is closing NSP and redistributing inmates and staff throughout the system.

He also said if he is allowed to close NSP gradually over the next few months, he can do so without layoffs, without overtime and without forced employee transfers. He admitted that might take up to eight months.

Skolnik rejected claims that closing NSP will leave the system without room to absorb a population increase, saying there are 2,700 vacant beds and NSP inmates will use only up about 600 of those.

When Miller referred to Skolnik's "secret plan" demanding to know why the board didn't have that plan, the director said the detailed plan hasn't been shared because it contains sensitive security information. He said board members will get the information they need from him in about a week.

Masto said she was disappointed because the prison board made it very clear in January 2008 they wanted to "weigh in and have input on any decisions."

"The only thing I'm disappointed in is you did not come back to the board to talk about this issue of closing NSP. It's a very significant policy decision."

She said without more details on the security issues, the budget and the plan for moving inmates and staff, she wasn't prepared to vote on whether to block closure of NSP.

"I don't think this should come as a surprise that we want to be involved in this decision," Miller said.

After several meetings discussing the potential closure of NSP, Miller compared it to "dealing with a petulant 15-year-old - you've got to keep going back and revisit." Gibbons said later that remark was unnecessarily rude.

But Miller said after the meeting, if they receive Skolnik's plan and it is sound, the board would be able to consider approving it.

Masto asked Skolnik if he could agree to not make moves designed to close down the old prison until the July meeting.

"I can comply with that," he said. "We will not close any units or allow the transfer of staff right now."

Skolnik and Masto agreed the prison system is understaffed and has been for years. He said the department has the second lowest staff ratio of any state and second lowest per-inmate operating costs in the nation. He said one of the things he is proudest of is that, despite that, his employees have been able to manage the institutions without major incidents.

"But as a consequence, nobody ever believes we need more money or more staff so we never get it," he said.