Rogers’ plan for federal prison draws criticism – Middlesboro News

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Rogers’ plan for federal prison draws criticism

Posted at 11:01 a.m. on Tuesday, July 25, 2023

The former Roxana strip coal mine where US Representative Hal Rogers wants to build a federal prison. Photo of No New Letcher Prison

BY JAMIE LUCKE

Kentucky Lantern

Opponents of a long-debated federal prison in Letcher County are criticizing U.S. Representative Hal Rogers for using what they call strongman tactics to fast-track the project without public comment or environmental scrutiny.

Even the courts, opponents say, would be barred from hearing legal challenges from jail, under language Rogers added to an appropriations bill last week.

Rogers’ provision directs the United States Attorney General to issue an Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision approving the prison within 30 days of the appropriations bills being signed into law. It also says jail decisions by the US Attorney General and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons will not be subject to judicial review.

The US House Appropriations Committee has yet to debate the spending bill, which will have to clear several hurdles before it becomes law.

House spending bills are expected to change significantly later this year when the GOP chamber considers reconciling its plans with the bipartisan spending bills the Senate Appropriations Committee has released.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 28 to 1 earlier this month to approve its version of the Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill, which does not include any provision mentioning Letcher’s prison.

Rogers has been working since at least 2006 to bring a federal prison to the county in southeastern Kentucky. He presents the prison as a source of jobs and economic development in a poor region that has lost thousands of jobs in the coal industry. The 16-member Letcher County Planning Commission has long sought a jail.

A coalition of local and national opponents are questioning the potential economic fallout. They say a proliferation of prisons in central Appalachia in recent decades has done little to improve the economy, while supporting mass incarceration and placing prisoners and their families at great distances from each other.

A statement released Tuesday by two citizens’ groups, Building Community Not Prisons and Concerned Letcher Countians, blames Rogers for trying to move the project forward without allowing additional public input. The people of Letcher County deserve a say because we vote, we pay taxes, we live here and we love this place, said Concerned Letcher Counties member Dr. Artie Anne Bates. We don’t want Rep. Rogers shoving something down our throats that we don’t agree with.

Rogers appeared to have prevailed in 2018 when the Federal Bureau of Prisons approved the construction of a penitentiary and high-security prison camp on a former strip mine in Roxana, saying it would relieve federal prison overcrowding in the mid-Atlantic region.

But the Trump administration pulled the plug, saying the prison was no longer needed due to a drop in prisoner numbers and that the $505 million set aside for the project would be wasteful spending.

President Joe Bidens’ budget proposal for 2024 would also cancel funding for the prison.

Rogers, R-Somerset, who is serving his term in the 22nd House, is a member and former chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. He is now chair of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding levels for the Department of Justice, which is responsible for federal prisons.

According to a press release issued by Rogers’ office in November 2022, $500 million he secured in an earlier appropriations bill is still available in the Bureau of Prisons budget for prison construction.

Since the 2018 approval, the Bureau of Prisons has changed the Letcher Plan to a medium-security federal correctional facility.

About 150 people attended (in person or virtually) a scoping meeting in Whitesburg, the Letcher County seat, hosted last November by the Bureau of Prisons to explain the new plan and begin work on a draft environmental impact statement. Opinion was split, with some supporting the prison in hopes it would spur other economic activity while others pointed to persistent poverty in nearby places that have prisons.

Then-state Rep. Angie Hatton, D-Whitesburg, said she preferred the medium-security plan to the originally proposed maximum-security facility, Katie Myers of Ohio Valley Resource reported.

The focus on rehabilitation is something I can live with, as a citizen here, much more easily than I could live with the idea of ​​a maximum security prison, Hatton said. The prison would actually help us find a hotel, and it would also be a very important way to have an airport here. Hatton, who lost his re-election bid, is now a member of the Kentucky Public Service Commission.

The provision Rogers has inserted into the current appropriations bill would dictate that an environmental impact statement approved in 2018 for the previous plan would now be sufficient to move the project forward.

But opponents insist that more studies are needed to protect local habitat and human health. These processes provide essential checks on the potential environmental impacts of prisons on endangered bat habitat, wetlands and old-growth forests, as well as the public health consequences of arsenic and radon exposure for incarcerated people and correctional staff, the statement from the two groups of citizens said.

The prison site is near the rare old-growth forest of Lilley Cornett Woods, where Eastern Kentucky University operates the Lilley Cornett Woods Appalachian Ecological Research Station.

Opponents also insist the area has a greater need for federal dollars than any other prison.

Beverly May, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Rogers voter, said that $500 million of taxpayers’ money should be used for housing, flood cleanup and prevention, not this unnecessary jail.

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