The Intersection of Two Crises

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

The story of the prisons just keeps on looking bad. While the budget fight gets most of the attention, the prisons might end up taking a wrecking ball to any progress made there. Receiver J. Clark Kelso has reported to federal Judge Thelton Henderson on the status of the prison health care system. You can grab the report over at CapAlert.

In the report, he began proceedings to gather discovery on the state's bank accounts from Controller John Chiang. Eventually, this could lead to the federal courts raiding the general fund to build the prison health facility that the Senate Republicans rejected recently. But ultimately, that bond package would have only bought us a bit of time, it certainly wasn't a solution. John Myers has Mike Villines on record totally missing the point:

"We have someone [Kelso] saying they need $7 billion for 180,000 population," Villines said. "It seems astronomical, and it doesn't seem well justified."

Because I bet that hospital in Bakersfield doesn't have quite the same security requirements that a prison hospital does. But, Villines wants his cake in his hand and down his gullet.

This is where our two pending crises intersect and where the solutions for both reside in one word: leadership.  Leadership to increase our revenue and decrease our prison population. Unfortunately, Arnold Schwarzenegger has failed to lead on either issue. History has shown that Republican governors can bring the legislature to a consensus by going out on a limb on revenue. Prison population makes the budget issue look simple, I suppose.  ToughOnCrime^TM is just too appealing.

So, even if we do get additional revenue, we'll still need money to cover the receiver's tab. This is not a crisis that will go away quickly or can be wished away by ignoring it. Capitol Alert has a "budget pool" to guess when the new budget will be brokered. Perhaps we should do a pool for when the Federal Courts will cap the prison population. Any takers?