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Buried in budget bill, a move to close California state prison in Susanville [1]
['Brian Baer']
Date: 2022-08
In this 2021 file photo, a prison officer searches a subject on his way to drop off his laundry, inside the High Desert State Prison, near Susanville. Sacramento Bee file
Buried in the new California state budget bill passed by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this week is a provision to close a prison in Susanville by circumventing state environmental reviews.
The legislation sets a June 2023 closure date for California Correctional Center, which as of March held about 1,600 inmates and employed nearly 1,000 people.
The legislative maneuver appears aimed at extracting Newsom’s administration from a lawsuit the City of Susanville filed last year. The suit claimed the prison closure violated the California Environmental Quality Act and California Penal Code.
The closure, first announced by Newsom’s administration in April 2021, was paused in August after a Lassen County Superior Court judge granted an injunction.
Assembly Bill 200, which designates state public safety spending, exempts the Susanville prison and any state prison or juvenile facility from review under the state environmental law, often referred to as CEQA. It specifies that California Correctional Center shall cease operations by June 30 of next year.
Corrections department spokeswoman Vicky Waters said Thursday that the court’s injunction remains in place for now.
“The department’s closure activities for CCC continue to be on hold at this time due to ongoing litigation,” Waters said in an emailed statement. “We will notify our staff, incarcerated population and stakeholders of any updates or changes.”
The corrections department did initiate the environmental review process under CEQA with a notice early this year that it was preparing an environmental impact report. The filing said the closure would likely reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and other resources.
Newsom’s budget blueprint from earlier this year suggested the state could soon close three more prisons, but didn’t identify them.
He first announced his intent to close a state prison in November 2019. When the coronavirus pandemic arrived in March 2020, the system accelerated some prisoner releases, reducing the total population from about 120,000 to the most recent figure of about 97,000.
Citing the population reductions, Newsom announced plans to close the first two prisons: California Correctional Center and Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, which the administration successfully shuttered in September. After the closure, California operates 34 prisons.
California’s corrections budget is more than $18 billion for the fiscal year that begins Friday. The corrections department is expected to spend about $104,000 per prisoner for the year, according to budget documents.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office has recommended closing a total of five state prisons by 2025, and that doing so would save the state $1.5 billion per year.
Prison employees in Susanville who are represented by SEIU Local 1000 have protested the closure, criticizing the state corrections department for using an opaque process to select which of facilities to close. Many prison employees make $90,000 or more in the remote area near the Nevada border.
Susanville has another prison, High Desert State Prison, which would accommodate some employees. Others would likely be offered positions at other institutions around the state, the corrections department has said.
This story was originally published July 1, 2022 5:00 AM.
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[1] Url:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article263087068.html#:~:text=Gavin%20Newsom%20this%20week%20is,and%20employed%20nearly%201%2C000%20people.
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