Laurie Roberts

opinion columnist

The men and women who stand guard in the state’s prisons haven’t received a raise in nine years.

Nine. Years.

Now comes a plan by the state to spend $2 million to boost the pay of the men and women who stand guard at a private prison near Kingman.

The Republic’s Craig Harris reports that the plan calls for the state to buy the prison and refinance it at a lower interest rate. Then we would turn over $2 million of the $8 million in annual savings to the private company that operates the prison so it can give raises to its private employees.

Wait … what?

Private prisons have long been a sacred cow at the state Capitol. Well-connected lobbyists spread around campaign cash to ensure that their interests are paramount and their prisons are full – or if not, they’re paid as if they are full anyway.

Never mind that Department of Corrections studies for years showed it costs more to incarcerate inmates in privately run medium-security prisons than in similar state-run prisons. In 2012, the Legislature outlawed future cost-comparison studies, claiming they were bogus.

Since then, our leaders have continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars opening more private prisons, contending that they save the state money.

Now comes Ducey with a plan to buy a private prison … in order to save the state money?

Under the deal, the state would pay the GEO Group $137 million to buy the prison then refinance the company’s 8.2 percent loan to a state rate of 2.1 percent. Because the state would own the building, it would reduce its payments to GEO from $72.3 million a year to $48.6 million a year for the remaining nine years of the contract.

Meanwhile, more than a quarter of the $8 million the state will save in annual interest payments would be given to GEO: $2 million to cover its employees’ pay raises and another $500,000 to cover the rising costs of food and health care.

This is curious on several levels.

One, our leaders always have assured us that private prisons cost the state less than public prisons. Yet now we are told that it’ll be cheaper if the state owns the private prison.

Kind of like…a public prison?

Two, GEO, which last year raked in $130 million in profits, will continue to operate the prison. You’d think such a profitable company – one that gave its CEO a $2.3 million raise last year – could afford to spend $2 million of its own money to give raises to its employees without help from Arizona taxpayers.

But then, there is three: Florida-based GEO Group spent at least $55,000 to get Gov. Doug Ducey elected in 2014, according to campaign-finance records. Meanwhile, more than $5.2 million in dark money was spent to ensure Ducey’s election. How much of that came from private prison industry, we’re not allowed to know.

The state calls this deal a win for everybody. (Well, everybody but the state’s correctional officers.)

"ADC (the Arizona Department of Corrections) and the Department of Administration worked with the Governor’s Office and the Legislature to suggest this idea in order to save Arizona taxpayers a significant amount of money over the remaining term of the existing vendor’s contract ," Corrections spokesman Andrew Wilder said in a statement.

Me? I’m wondering how much more we might save if we just eliminated private prisons?