If numbers obsess Sandy, change the numbers

When Robin Sandy, chairwoman of the Idaho Board of Correction, says she doesn't want to "grow" government by placing the Idaho Correctional Center under state management, here's what she is watching: full time positions or FTPs, for short.

It's a scorecard for measuring the size of state government. Every governor - from Democrat Cecil D. Andrus to Republicans Phil Batt and Dirk Kempthorne - have kept track on the FTPs. On that score, Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter has had little need to reach for the aspirin bottle. Aided by recession-fueled budget cuts, Otter has overseen a flat set of FTPs.

Shortly before he took office in 2007,

Idaho employed 17,279 FTPs.

Seven years later, it's up by only 49 jobs.

Of course, it helps when you don't count ICC's 394 employees.

They work at a state-owned prison.

They tend to state inmates.

They're paid with state tax dollars.

But they answer to Corrections Corporation of America, the contractor Idaho pays $29 million a year to operate ICC.

So these people technically are deemed to be CCA, not state, employees.

That's just fine with Sandy. But you've paid the price.

With its eye focused on profits, CCA has scrimped on staffing - putting prisoners in harm's way.

Inmate-on-inmate violence became so prevalent that ICC was dubbed the "gladiator school."

An inmate class-action lawsuit resulted in a federal contempt of court sanction against CCA, which has admitted falsifying employee time cards to conceal staffing shortages.

CCA profited from Idaho taxpayers, but the corporation's gains flowed to its headquarters in Nashville, Tenn.

What did Idaho get? Evidence is mounting that private prison contractors don't save taxpayers any money. Contractors cherry pick the healthiest, least troublesome inmates, leaving the state-run institutions with the costliest prisoners. The Associated Press discovered in 2012 that Idaho probably lost money on the CCA deal.

Recently, Michigan found it could house 968 inmates for about $5.7 million less than the private prison industry's bid of $18.6 million.

But when Sandy and her board chose not to extend the CCA contract last summer, they refused Correction Director Brent Reinke's request to submit his agency's own bid. Since then, both CCA and GEO Group - which account for 75 percent of the private prison market - have walked away from the ICC project. Without competition from the state, you can't be sure a marketplace of one or two smaller contractors won't bid up the price.

Sandy, however, has not walked away from her stance - in spite of the fact that Otter has since entertained the possibility of opening the bidding to Reinke's department.

Here's an educated guess: The people in Otter's inner circle are anxious about adding 394 ICC staff positions to the governor's FTP count.

What a weird obsession. So what if Otter becomes a governor who added 2.5 percent more state jobs during seven years? Is an abstraction all that stands in the way of putting the state back in the public safety business where it clearly belongs?

If that's the case, then why not get the government out of something private business does reasonably well? When it comes to beer and wine sales, Albertsons and Safeway perform a proficient job of balancing consumer demand with the state's desire for temperance. Why not privatize liquor sales, too?

Instantly, 205 state FTPs at the state liquor dispensary would disappear from Otter's ledger. The governor's pristine record would be preserved.

Who could quibble with that? - M.T.