Pubdate: Sun, 09 Jan 2000 Source: Fresno Bee, The (CA) Copyright: 2000 The Fresno Bee Contact: http://www.fresnobee.com/man/opinion/letters.html Website: http://www.fresnobee.com/ Forum: http://www.fresnobee.com/man/projects/webforums/opinion.html Author: Mike Lewis, Bee Capital Bureau ECONOMIC LOCKDOWN With unemployment largely unaffected and jobs going to residents of larger cities, the Valley's prison boom hasn't been the economic boon advertised. It wasn't supposed to be like this, 800 people lined up in the rain outside John Muir Junior High School in Corcoran for a shot at two low-wage clerical jobs in the local prison. Everyone, from cops and city officials to restaurant owners and lawmakers, says they thought the two prisons in the Kings County town would ease chronic double-digit unemployment and a lack of middle-class wages in small Valley towns. Financial experts said so. Local boosters took the projections and ran with them. They saw prisons, once pariahs, as economic saviors. The prisons arrived. Salvation hasn't. In 15 years, California has spent $4.2 billion building 23 new prisons. Eight of those prisons are within 150 miles of Fresno. An examination of Avenal, Corcoran and Delano indicates the prisons don't do much for the towns where they were built. Most of the 8,000 jobs haven't gone to residents of these eight new company towns. They haven't sparked an economic revival in the southern San Joaquin Valley. There are few new houses, restaurants and stores - despite town leaders' expectations, despite $2 billion spent in construction over 15 years, despite a half-billion dollars a year in payroll. It's clear from the long lines of cars streaming past Corcoran, through Avenal and away from Delano as prison shifts change. In Corcoran, locals know to stay off Dairy and Whitley avenues and Highway 43 at 6 a.m., 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. "We were told a lot of guards were going to be living in town, that the tule fog was going to be the big thing to keep them living here, that no one was going to want to commute," said Police Cpl. Victor Castillo, 34, a lifelong Corcoran resident. Instead, guards and much of the staff "just blow through town," Castillo said. "I don't think more than a handful of them actually live here." These company towns viewed prisons as a clean industry that would provide jobs. Having depended on the Department of Corrections, they remain economically troubled. Now state and local officials are wondering what more can be done. The same morning in Corcoran that 800 job-seekers in shifts of 150 took civil-service placement tests for two jobs that paid between $17,000 to $23,000 a year, the town's unemployment rate remained identical to its 15% figure of 1986, a year before the first prison opened - and unchanged since a second prison opened in 1997. Corcoran's listed population is 20,900 - and 11,464 of them are in prison. The state created 2,604 prison jobs in Corcoran between 1986 and 1997. "When they built the prisons, I thought we would be the first to get jobs," said Stella Corona, 28, of Corcoran, who waited in line for her test. "But it seems like they went to other people." Napoleon Madrid, mayor of Delano, is native to the town known as the birthplace of the United Farm Workers. His parents worked in the fields because there was little else, especially for immigrants. When voters put him on the City Council in 1996 and fellow council members appointed him mayor two years later, Madrid had one thing in mind: more jobs. Madrid said he doesn't see them generated by the state prison system, even though his town is slated for a second facility recently approved by the Legislature and Gov. Davis. "People here thought that more of the jobs would be available to locals," Madrid said. "But that hasn't been the case." Valleywide, unemployment remains three times the state average of 4.8%. The reality is dawning on civic leaders: These company towns have seen only a slight benefit to the billions poured into building the largest prison system in the nation. According to estimates from the state and the prison guards' union, 7% to 9% of the prison jobs in these towns go to people living there. Most hires live in Fresno, Visalia, Hanford and Bakersfield. And the bulk of jobs locals get are service jobs, not positions as guards or on the medical staff that pay $30,000 to $80,000 a year. Civil service guidelines have awarded good-paying jobs to people on state waiting lists who have taken civil-service tests rarely offered in the prison towns, records show. Local business owners, who hoped for lucrative contracts with the prisons, sometimes have found the state an unwilling partner. To Madrid and others, prisons have not met expectations. "If were up to me, I wouldn't have the prison," Madrid said. "Or get the new one." California's oldest prison, San Quentin, opened in 1852. Nearly 30 years passed before the second was built in Folsom, near Sacramento. They remain the state's most famous lockups, mostly because both were the subject of country-western ballads, "Folsom Prison Blues" and a similar ode to San Quentin. "We'll always have Johnny Cash to thank," said a rueful Joe Galiardi, executive director of Folsom's Chamber of Commerce. Galiardi said he hears the singer's name when he calls the East Coast to solicit business: "We seem to be pretty well-known." California built a handful of prisons through the 1960s and 1970s. Focused on rehabilitation, Corrections put a hospital in Vacaville and gave prisons euphemistic names such as Sierra Conservation Center and California Men's Colony. But by the late 1970s, two events changed how the state handled prisons and prisoners. A rising crime rate prompted lawmakers to push tough-on-crime laws, especially involving drugs. Then the state, with the support of prisoners, abandoned its indeterminate sentencing statutes for an increasingly strict model that mandates a specific number of years behind bars for certain crimes. Prison populations soared. By the time voters in 1982 elected former Attorney General George Deukmejian, a Republican with an aggressive anti-crime platform, prisons already were packed. Deukmejian - with the support of the Legislature and aggressive lobbying by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association - embarked on a prison building binge that remains second to none nationally. Between 1982 and 1997, California taxpayers financed 23 prisons - putting one of every three in the Valley. Small Valley towns, mired in unemployment and few year-round jobs, saw an opportunity. And the prisons came. Robert Presley said he remembers those days. He was a state senator before Gov. Davis appointed him to run the state's $6 billion Youth and Adult Corrections Department. To many, the appointment made perfect sense. The Riverside Democrat not only wrote the legislation to sell billions in bonds to build the prisons, he wrote many tough-on-crime laws that helped fill them. Until 1980, few cities wanted prisons, he said. Then the recession changed everything. "We were so pleased when cities started to request them," he said. "They saw the chance at economic benefits. Those are good-paying jobs." It also helped that prisons lost their reputation as crime factories for host cities. Keith Farrington, a sociology professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., is one of the nation's few academics to study the prisons' impact on small towns. He said they seldom deliver as predicted - good or bad. Farrington said an economic boom in many towns, especially if those towns are near larger, more attractive communities, rarely occurs. However, he said, the same goes with the forecasted higher crime rates. "In reality, they can be pretty benign," he said. Valley crime statistics illustrate Farrington's points. Similar-sized cities with and without prisons had comparable crime rate declines during the 1990s. To lock up so many people, the state went on a hiring spree. During the building boom, Corrections grew faster than any other state agency, increasing from approximately 11,300 employees in 1983 to more than 44,000 last year. This made Corrections the second largest state employer, after the university system. According to documents at state Corrections headquarters, state-paid financial analysts towns predicted two things: Prison towns would gain better-paying, middle-class jobs. Housing and retail, such as stores and shopping centers, would expand along with the population increase. City treasuries would benefit from additional state and federal money because inmates count as part of a town's population. The money, called "subventions," was the primary sweetener when prisons were pitched to towns. Analysts were only partly right. For small towns such as Corcoran and Avenal, the additional inmate population - about half of each town's listed population is behind bars - means another $200,000 to $500,000 annually without any corresponding demand on most city services. "Inmates don't drive. They don't call the cops," Corcoran Mayor Ruben Quintanilla said. And when cities in the early 1990s complained about the prison impact on court and sewer systems, for example, the state agreed to kick in additional cash to cover both. In other words, when an inmate has a court date for a crime in prison, the state, not the county, picks up the tab. The money has widened roads in Corcoran, built sidewalks in Avenal and purchased a few police cruisers. But it hasn't led to significant economic development near the prisons. It appears only larger Valley cities such as Hanford, Visalia and Tulare saw a slight surge in new homes and stores. The prison towns did not. Quintanilla, who also manages an auto-parts store in Corcoran, said he remembers the meetings, the environmental impact reports, the politicking that brought maximum security Corcoran State Prison in 1987 and then the inmate drug-treatment center that locals call "Corcoran II" 10 years later. "The prisons have been good for the town," he said. "But I did hope we would see more jobs." Avenal's 17% unemployment hasn't budged, even with the addition of 1,500 jobs. In 1990, the year the first heavy equipment bit into a former cotton farm to begin construction of North Kern State Prison, Delano's unemployment hovered at 26%. This year, joblessness in Delano remains at 26%. The number of people in poverty in nearly every Valley town with a prison has risen since the prisons were built, state data show. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, an instructor at University of California at Berkeley who is writing a book on how prisons have changed towns in the state for University of California Press, said towns would be better off to recruit businesses than prisons. Gilmore, an active opponent of the prison system, did research that shows poverty increased in prison towns after the facilities were completed. Corcoran Chamber of Commerce President Frances Squire, the former owner of Corcoran Country Inn, said her motel and nearby Budget Inn benefit from the prisons but that not much else seems to. "We do get relatives of inmates staying here, temporary staff also. And I think a couple of the local restaurants benefit, too," she said. "But I had my house in town recently appraised. I've owned it for 20 years. It hasn't risen in value one bit." Squire, 48, said the town where she grew up did get a McDonald's and Taco Bell along the commute route, though it still lacks clothing or shoe stores. "We have three pizza parlors in town. Bring us chicken or something," she said laughing. Some merchants have found a niche. Jeremy Robertson, owner of Corcoran T-Shirts, said he makes the bulk of his revenue on guard uniforms. "The only thing we do is CDC," Robertson said. According to the state prison department's economic analysis, the predicted business expansion from the new prisons didn't happen. In some cases, business declined. In 1980, the average Avenal resident paid $16.81 in retail sales tax. By 1989, two years after the prison was built, it dipped to $11.23, one analysis showed. Additional retail development outside the city limits generated by the prison might encourage more locals to shop elsewhere more often than they did before the prison's arrival, the analysis speculated, a condition called "pull factor." Corcoran, a separate analysis indicated, experienced the same thing. What frustrates people in Corcoran, Delano and elsewhere is that Corrections has done little to reverse the problem. At Corcoran High School, where nearly one of every two students won't attend college, a blue-collar job with middle-class wages is easy to fill, residents say. But Corrections doesn't recruit, school officials say. State participation in the high school's career day has been minimal. Larry Buenefe, a career counselor at Corcoran High, said prison officials "aren't exactly breaking down my door." "Kids would take these jobs if they were offered," he said. "The local police recruits here." In Delano, city officials say they haven't heard a word about jobs from Corrections officials who plan to build a second prison there. "Right now is when the state of California needs to start doing a recruitment process here in Delano," Madrid said. "Now is the time they need to come in and train our people and help them pass those tests. I don't see any of that." Madrid said he knows that getting a state civil-service job can take more than a year even if the applicant is qualified. For many prison jobs, paying from $17,000 to $75,000 annually, this means a high school diploma or a general education degree and no felony convictions. Applicants are tested and ranked. Corrections officials say that in many cases locals simply lack qualifications, such as a high school diploma. Moreover, when Avenal's prison opened in 1987, the state had a backlog list of potential correctional officers and existing officers who requested transfers from other facilities. They got first priority. Those reasons are not good enough for lawmakers and public officials with constituents who live in the economically depressed areas. But other than a few internal analyses by the department, the issue has received little attention. With a $335 million second prison for Delano in the advanced planning stage and budding plans for a sex offender treatment center, perhaps in Coalinga, and a geriatric prison for aging lifers, the time is now, Assemblyman Dean Florez said. At North Kern State Prison, "95% of the officers drive 20 miles round trip from their homes in Bakersfield," said the Shafter Democrat, who joked that eight prisons in his 30th District leaves him with more inmates than registered voters. "This is an issue that needs immediate addressing. "We need to recognize that if the state is going to use these prisons as targeted investments - and it does - then it needs to start functioning like one." Sen. Chuck Poochigian, R-Fresno, said he hadn't heard about any problems with prison employment. "I've not followed this particular issue closely, but it is an interesting subject," Poochigian said. "I know these communities were eager to put prisons in these towns in order to address the high unemployment." Lynette Bell, a spokeswoman with the state's Employment Development Department, said she didn't think the agency had been asked to study the issue. Florez said he plans to craft legislation that would offer home-buyer down payment bonuses to lure correctional officers or some other method to keep more of the money local. "We need to get them living in these towns, and spending in these towns - not just the occasional burger and a tank of gas," Florez said. Nowhere does the problem appear more acute than Avenal, where the state writes $64.2 million annually in payroll checks. The newest apartment complex, 12-year-old Westview Apartments in which south-facing windows have views of the prison, has been the target of bank foreclosure once since the prison opened in 1987. It now hangs what appears to be a permanent vacancy sign. Every day, three shifts of prison workers drive past it daily on their way home to Fresno, Hanford and Visalia. In 1990, state analysts reviewed the economic impact of Avenal State Prison. The little-noticed report, done by the same Berkeley-based group that years earlier predicted a financial boost, concluded: "Avenal has had difficulty attracting as many prison employees as anticipated, as evidenced by vacant new homes and apartments. The principal reason is that many prison employees regard Avenal as isolated, small and lacking amenities. Prison employees have shown a remarkable willingness to commute long distances and unwillingness to purchase a home in Avenal." Presley said he didn't realize so few jobs were going to locals or that the economic effect was limited in the company towns: "Maybe we should look a little closer at local recruitment and job retention." His boss, Gov. Davis, was less enthusiastic, saying economic benefits are not part of his prison philosophy. "I have never pitched prisons as anything other than punishment," Davis said, adding that he doesn't consider them "economic drivers." "I've never presented that prisons serve a purpose other than protecting the public." He said prisons should be "good corporate citizens" and should "reach out to the communities" that house them. Corcoran officials say they have attempted to reach out to the community recently. A few weeks ago, a contractor fair sought to show local business owners and salespeople how to win supply contracts. And there is the matter of the recent mass civil-service testing at the junior high, the first such effort in two years. "I do think the institution has brought jobs to the community," said Linda Meske, a Corcoran prison employee who was administering the civil-service test. "We really have been working on improving our relationship with the town." But asked where she lives, Meske paused before replying: "Visalia." For the Valley's prison towns, the answer may lie in the new administration and its willingness to force its massive prison system to spend more money in its host towns. Madrid said dealing with corrections boss Cal Terhue has been a "pleasure" compared to his predecessor, James Gomez. Quintanilla, Corcoran's mayor, said Corcoran prison Warden George Galaza in the past year has tried to build a relationship with the city by encouraging local businesses to work with the prison. Ultimately, the proof of the prisons' value to these communities will come from the people in the towns who expected so much more when Corrections came calling. Moving from the drizzle into the auditorium, Stella Corona said she wasn't thinking about the prison's failed promise or Corcoran's lack of amenities. She said she likes it there - "It's a good family town," she said - and wants to stay. A $17,000-a-year job with benefits is a rarity in a town that bills itself as the nation's cotton capital. "I'm hopeful," she said, even though she previously failed to get a prison job. "A job at there would be great. That's why so many people are here." With that, she moved through the auditorium door and sat down at a cafeteria table next to friend Kathy Cruz, also there to take the test. The test moderator shushed the room, read the instructions and told everyone to begin. Corona, with hope that things would change, put pencil to paper. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D