Prison guard union pads Perata's Leadership California committee with big donations

By Jeff Mitchell, PolitickerCA.com Editor

Say what you want about California's powerful state prison guards union but never under estimate they're ability to know the political score in Sacramento.

With a tip of the PolitickerCA.com cap to Josh Richman over at the Oakland Tribune, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association last Friday dropped a whopping $250,000 into the Leadership California committee's accounts, reports filed with the Secretary of State's office show.

Leadership California is state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata's all-purpose political committee. He used money from the committee to campaign for infrastructure bonds in 2006, healthcare reform in 2007 and a failed effort to recall Republican state Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Merced) from office earlier this year.

A veritable who's who of Golden State power brokers -- from land developers to Indian casinos to Hollywood studios -- have all thrown tens of thousands into Leadership California's account.

But none of those contributors have come close to what the prison guards have ponied up this year. To date, their contributions come to a staggering $602,000 -- and that's just for the first eight months of this year.

What Perata, who will be termed out of the state senate this fall, is going to do with the money isn't quite clear yet. The committee's total coffers are now in the low millions.

JEFF MITCHELL is a PolitickerCA.com Editor and can be reached via email at jeff.mitchell@politickerca.com.

Related topics: Don Perata, Leadership California

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Comments

There is a good reason for

posted by richmck

There is a good reason for the prison union to contribute a lot of money to our elected political leaders - they needed to show their gratitude for AB 900 which was passed only because the unions wanted the prison system to expand. It was quiently passed almost without any notice despite the fact that it spends billions for prison beds that will be used for 50 or more years.

The $6.5 billion in prison construction bonds are not needed. Instead of construction, the state should release Requests for Proposals for the actual 16,600 prison bed shortage reported by the Legislative Analysist. The contract beds could house technical parole violators currently in prison.

California’s artificially high parole revocation rates are at least twice the rates of other large states. Each technical parole violator returned to prison adds about $12,000 to prison operating costs. If the system were operating rationally, there would be about 30,000 rather than 72,000 technical parole violators returned to prison annually, an annual cost difference of over $380,000,000.

The extraordinarily high parole revocation rates are due entirely to the long term county jail bed shortage. Prior to the jail bed shortage, technical violations were dealt with at the parole unit level. Technical violators were retained in county jail while a parole agent located a local program alternative. The jail bed shortage required immediate transfer of even minor parole violators to prison for parole revocation action. Return to prison for a decision rather than deciding on a disposition at the unit level always results in a revocation term being assessed, regardless of the facts of the case.

08/20/08 9:57 am