Prior to yesterday, the buzz around the federal prison health care receiver was that he  spent half a billion more than budgeted in 2008-2009.  As Clark Kelso explained, these were overcharges for out-of-prison hospital care.  Because the facilities are so lax and because the proposed money Kelso has consistently sought hasn’t arrived, prisoners with medical issues often must be sent offsite.  “There’s a lot [of inmate care] that does have to be sent out […] because we don’t maintain that level of care within the prison.”

That was a message statement.  He was essentially saying “and I’ll keep going over budget if you don’t build the facilities needed.”  Interestingly enough, the very next day both sides floated a deal that would cut back the amount of prison hospitals to be built, but finally, actually build them.

State corrections officials and the prison system’s medical care receiver said Thursday they have reached the outlines of an agreement to build two new long-term health care facilities for inmates at a cost of $1.9 billion.

If the two sides can craft the memorandum of understanding that they say is imminent, it would represent a significant step toward ending the federal oversight of prison medical care in California that has created a constitutional crisis over the past year.

“That’s certainly something I believe we can finalize with this deal,” federal receiver J. Clark Kelso said in a joint telephone press conference with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Matt Cate […]

The facilities would house 3,400 inmates and be bond financed – possibly without having to be approved by the Legislature, according to Cate.

Originally, Kelso had sought a 10,000-bed set of facilities costing $8 billion, so this is significantly cut back.  However, it makes some sense if it is accompanied by a reduction in the overall prison population, thus requiring less health care infrastructure.  The point that Kelso finally got across is that we can keep delaying and delaying and go massively over budget every year to meet Constitutional responsibilities, or we can build the damn facilities.  This looks like a loss for Kelso, but it’s a win.

Bonds for infrastructure are at least somewhat inoffensive, but they need to be issued.  AB 900 bonds to build more prisons never got issued two years after being approved.

…Scott Graves has more, including the data point that our corrections population is much older now than in past years, requiring more health care.  Another legacy of insane ToughOnCrime sentencing policy.

John Myers reports that US District Judge Thelton Henderson just ordered up a big glass of STFU for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown.

The federal judge who took control of California prison health care some three years ago rejected a request today to scrap the court-appointed receivership.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson denied a petition from Governor Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to replace the receivership with the more limited powers of a special master.

The 24-page ruling from Henderson is probably best summarized by the following passage:

“Based on the entire record in this case, the Court is far from confident that Defendants [the state] have the will, capacity, or leadership to provide constitutionally adequate medical care in the absence of a receivership, and Defendants have presented no evidence to the contrary.”

Schwarzenegger, Brown, and the entire political establishment in Sacramento have had plenty of chances to show their commitment to solving the prison crisis over the past 30 years, and they have miserably, utterly failed.  They want to hide from those failures because they don’t want to pay to meet their obligations to prisoners under the US Constitution.  And of course, the Administration plans to appeal the ruling, because they can’t admit their own failure.

Good to see that Henderson didn’t fall for the coordinated swiftboating of Clark Kelso.  Maybe now we can talk about cost-effective reforms that make sense instead of a fealty to “tough on crime” logic and a shrinking from obligations as a public servant.

(By the way, I highly recommend Adam Serwer’s article about prison reform, citing Kansas as a case study in how to drive down recidivism, provide economic opportunity for those coming out of the corrections system and save money all at once.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown are teaming up, along with most of the political establishment in Sacramento actually, to try and get rid of Clark Kelso.  He’s the federal prison health care receiver who has been charged by a judge with ending the cruel and unusual punishment in state prisons and bring the medical treatment up to a Constitutional standard.  Nobody in Sacramento likes him because he insists on spending money to do that.  The argument is that Kelso has already improved prison health care so dramatically that his services are no longer needed.  And today, on the same day that Brown and the Administration’s officials went to court to get Kelso dismissed, two stories are leaked to the Sacramento Bee painting him in a bad light.

First, they printed an article that might as well have been an amicus brief for the court, both lauding the improvements in health care while assailing Kelso’s administrative capacity and costs:

Three years later, prisoners, clinicians and inmate advocates say conditions slowly are changing. Thanks to improvements in clinical staffing, many inmates get skilled, effective treatment. The court-appointed overseer of prison medical care, J. Clark Kelso, maintains that eventually his plans also will save the state billions of dollars.

But a Bee investigation of Kelso’s operations found clinical successes tempered by deadly lapses – including a rise in “possibly preventable deaths” and serious errors linked to fatalities. Administrative missteps have jeopardized the availability of specialist doctors. And the cost of the receiver’s operations and plans dwarfs spending by other states.

These arguments sound exactly like the dichotomy at the heart of the politicians’ case for dismissal – Kelso is good but not good enough, and he’s wasting money.  Just to prove the point, they added a sidebar claiming that Kelso is overpaying staff:

Given the state’s budget woes, the prison health care receivership has raised eyebrows for generous compensation of its employees. A state audit exposed exorbitant salaries in 2007 at the quasi-public agency. Yet enormous salaries remain common.

Last year, seven of 26 staffers – including two part-timers – still were paid more than the $225,000 annual rate earned by corrections chief Matthew Cate. Eight enjoy large Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation pensions on top of their salaries.

And prison doctors and nurses dominate the state’s best-paid roster. More than 240 doctors or nurses, state employees overseen by the receiver, were paid more than the $226,359 earned by the state prison department’s medical chief.

This just appears conspicuous to me.  Leading up to this hearing on Kelso’s dismissal, a major newspaper prints two exposés reflecting negatively on him.

State leaders are in no position to whine about money.  They caused this crisis and continue to cause it every single day through their gross negligence and failure to rein in out-of-control sentencing of non-violent offenders.  The parole system is a mess and increases recidivism.  There is a total failure of leadership at all levels, and somehow they’re trying to pin this on the independent receiver brought in to fix their failure?  I’m all for lowering prison costs, but the best way to do that is to reduce PRISONERS, not give them inadequate facilities or care or rehabilitation and treatment.  Sacramento’s elite doesn’t want to face that, so they Swift-Boat the people who tell them the truth and run away from the real challenges.

Don Perata can crow about a budget deal all he wants, but a certain prison medical care receiver might throw that into some flux.

California prison medical care receiver J. Clark Kelso filed a legal motion today to force the state to come up with $8 billion over the next five years to fund his plan to build seven long-term care facilities and provide other improvements for inmate patients.

The action filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco also seeks contempt of court citations against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang.

Kelso said he is still talking with the governor’s and controller’s offices and other officials to resolve the dispute over funding of his medical plan but that he will ask that both Schwarzenegger and Chiang be present at a scheduled Sept. 22 hearing in San Francisco if the issue is not resolved […]

Kelso said he wants $3.1 billion in the 2008-09 fiscal year. The request would increase the projected $15.2 billion spending shortfall for the year by another 20 percent.

Nobody paid much attention to this problem, but it was always there, threatening to blow yet another hole in the budget.  Democrats tried to borrow the money to pay for this but Republicans blocked it twice.  But this isn’t some minor inconvenience that can be flitted away.  This is about unconstitutional prison conditions that is causing at least one needless death a week.  It would be bad for business to actually remedy this, so lawmakers ignored it.  Aggressively.

Kelso blasted the Legislature for failing so far in its current session to provide bond funding for his project. He singled out the state Senate’s Republican caucus for holding up the bonds because of its concern that last year’s prison construction bond plan hasn’t taken hold.

A spokeswoman for Senate GOP leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto did not have an immediate comment on the receiver’s motion.

“No comment” has been the watchword of the GOP in this budget year.

Kelso’s going to win this case, too.  He’s operating under a federal court order and his mandate is clear.  And yet we’re going to put in a temporary regressive tax instead of a structural revenue overhaul.

More great leadership from Sacramento.  Hope the cocktail weenies are good at tonight’s round of fundraisers!

The NYT has more.