Senate’s budget includes $66M for new jail at Halawa

Legislators in the state Senate are proposing that the state build a new prison and a new jail at Halawa to ease overcrowding in the correctional system, earmarking $66 million in the Senate draft of the state budget to jump-start that plan.

The new facilities would include a new jail to house pretrial and short-term inmates to replace the Oahu Community Correctional Center, and a new prison that would allow the state to bring back convicts who are now serving their sentences at a privately operated prison in Arizona.

The state has spent about $1.2 million so far on a site selection study for a replacement facility for OCCC that narrowed the top prospects to four sites, but state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz said it is time to finally choose a site.

“This will hopefully end the discussion of the where the replacement of OCCC will go,” said Dela Cruz (D, Wahiawa-Whitmore-Mililani Mauka). He said the state Department of Public Safety agrees that Halawa is probably the best location, and said the Senate proposal would not short-circuit the formal site selection process now underway.

“This process has been talked about for years, about where we’re going to go,” Dela Cruz said. “It’s actually just making a decision, and saying, ‘Let’s move forward.’ If not, we’re stuck in this planning, researching process.”

The draft Senate budget announced Wednesday includes $60 million to design the new jail, which is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars more to build. The budget draft also includes another $6 million for environmental studies and planning for additional prison bed space at Halawa, he said.

The draft budget also includes $4 million for the state Department of Agriculture to finance planning and design of a new animal quarantine station that would be built at Sand Island. The preliminary site selection report for OCCC listed the current animal quarantine site in Halawa as the best site identified yet for a new jail, suggesting the old quarantine facility will have to be moved.

Those items were all part of the new Senate Ways and Means Committee’s two-year budget proposal that totals $7.2 billion in general treasury spending for the year beginning July 1, and $7.4 billion the following year. That would be an increase of $189 million in spending next year from the current budget, and another $439 million increase the following year.

If federal funds and special funds are also taken into account, the proposed Senate budget would total $12.8 billion next year, and $13.5 billion the following year, said Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda.

The budget proposal announced Wednesday would also authorize another $999 million in spending over the next two years for construction projects, which would include the planning and design money for new correctional facilities at Halawa, Dela Cruz said.

That Senate proposal is a considerable reduction from the two-year construction budget that Gov. David Ige proposed in December. Ige had proposed spending $1.49 billion on construction, but earlier this month urged lawmakers to scale back that amount to reduce state borrowing costs in the years ahead.

The Senate’s list of proposed projects for the next two years has not yet been made public, but Dela Cruz said the Senate spending plan includes $20 million to purchase 500 acres of agricultural land in Central Oahu. The state has already purchased 2,000 acres of privately owned Central Oahu land to preserve it for agriculture as part of the same initiative, and is buying 900 acres more.

The Senate budget proposal also includes $35 million for a 200- to 250-unit senior housing project on North School Street, he said.

House Public Safety Committee Chairman Gregg Takayama said House lawmakers will consider the Senate proposal to put both a new jail and a new prison at Halawa, but said he is unsure whether the infrastructure there, including water and sewer systems in the area, is adequate for that kind of dramatic expansion.

The existing Halawa Correctional Facility houses about 750 inmates. OCCC is holding about 1,300 prisoners, and another 1,600 Hawaii convicts are being held at Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Ariz.

Takayama said he wondered whether there is enough space at Halawa to fit three facilities on the site, but added, “I think it’s an interesting approach, worth exploring.”

He said the estimated cost of replacing OCCC is $500 million to $800 million, and questioned the wisdom of building two facilities at that cost, or more, which would end up totaling a billion dollars.

Takayama has argued the state should build one large new prison elsewhere, and move the OCCC inmates to Halawa so the state would only need to build one new prison. However, that proposal appears to have died for the year when the Senate refused to consider it.

Toni Schwartz, public information officer for the Department of Public Safety, said in a written statement that “we appreciate any assistance the Legislature offers our Department to replace our outdated and overcrowded facilities, and also bring home inmates from the mainland.”

The Senate budget draft will now go to the full Senate for a floor vote and then advance to conference committee, where House and Senate lawmakers will iron out the differences between their budget proposals.