EDITORIAL
At Play With Prison Guards
December 6 2002
In the final days before state lawmakers confront the state's staggering
debt, three of the Legislature's four top leaders are among several elected
officials being wined and dined by the well-heeled union representing California's
prison guards at a Maui beach resort where the cobalt Pacific washes onto
Kaanapali Beach.
Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), Assembly Republican leader
Dave Cox of Fair Oaks and Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga
insist that their attendance at the California Correctional Peace Officers
Assn. event will not influence their decisions at next week's special legislative
session on slashing the state's multibillion-dollar deficit. Surely, fond
memories of mai tais at the hotel's 142-yard freshwater swimming pool will
not lead them to ignore fiscal discipline.
Everyone should share in the pain of draconian budget cuts. That includes
not only public school teachers, uninsured children and nurses but prison
guards, who won an astonishing 37% raise last year after the union, in the
2001-02 campaign finance cycle, gave $15,000 to Wesson, $6,000 to Brulte
and $2,000 to Cox. The legislators say they are footing their own air fare
and hotel bills -- most likely out of their campaign funds, which is legal
in California.
Cox's spokesman, Peter DeMarco, says his boss wasn't going for the island
flavors at the Keka'a Terrace or the white and gold beaches but rather to
"have discussions with his constituencies .... If they had held it in Sacramento,
he'd have gone to Sacramento," DeMarco said.
That's reassuring. After all, no amount of Hawaiian mahalo, or gratitude,
should deter legislators from rethinking the state's disastrously inefficient,
$900-million-a-year parole system, which returns about 90,000 parolees to
prison each year, only to see most of them re-offend, usually for technical
violations like flunking a drug test or blowing off an interview with their
parole officer.
The parole system is the engine of the state's prison industry, generating
jobs for guards. Nationally, only 35% of people coming into state prisons
are parole violators. In California, 70% of all admissions to state prison
are for parole violations.
The grim realities of parole might seem a world away from the lava-rock waterways,
lilting slack-key guitars and garden paths at the Sheraton Maui resort. Even
so, Wesson, Cox and Brulte should down a cup of souvenir Kona coffee Monday
morning and confront those realities responsibly. As for the guards union,
why not hold next year's conference in Bakersfield?