Larch Corrections Center has won a reprieve from the Washington Department of Corrections.
On Friday, Department of Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail announced that Larch, which had been scheduled to close Feb. 1, will remain open and return to its full 480-bed capacity.
In its place, the state will close McNeil Island Corrections Center, a former federal penitentiary on an island in Puget Sound, by April 1, and 240 of McNeil Island’s inmates will be transferred to the vacant Larch unit. Larch is east of Brush Prairie in the Yacolt Burn State Forest.
The abrupt turnaround — plans already were under way to transfer Larch inmates to other prisons around the state — was driven by the state’s worsening budget crisis, Vail said in an interview.
“It’s a decision we have weighed,” he said. “A couple of weeks ago, it seemed inevitable that there wasn’t another way to go, given the need to save as much money as we could as fast as we could.”
McNeil already had downsized from 1,200 inmates to 515 over the past year and had been changed from a medium-security to a minimum-security prison.
The Special Commitment Center for sexually violent predators, operated by the Department of Health and Social Services, will remain open on McNeil Island.
The state had estimated that the closure of Larch would save $2 million by June 30. The permanent closure of McNeil Island will save the state $6.3 million annually — a net $12.7 million over the 2011-13 biennium, Vail said.
Larch will regain its full population of 480 by Feb. 1, he said, and 30 to 40 prison staff positions will be restored.
On Wednesday, about 130 Larch supporters attended a community forum at Hockinson High School to show their support for keeping the prison open and preserving the inmate firefighting crews based at the camp.
Sid Clark, a counselor at Larch who helped organize that event, said Friday he wasn’t ready to celebrate. He noted that the 2010 Legislature struck a compromise with the Department of Corrections to keep half the beds at Larch open, only to see that decision reversed in recent weeks.
“We’ve been through this before,” he said. “Is this going to keep us open after June 30? Come July 1, will we be back on the chopping block again? We need to know, Does Larch stay open, period?”
Unfortunately, Vail said, there are no guarantees as long as the state faces continuing budget deficits.
“I wish I could tell the (Larch) employees that they can work there until retirement,” he said, but that’s a promise he can’t make.
Gov. Chris Gregoire already has directed the Department of Corrections to cut $53 million from its budget, and a grim revenue forecast Thursday could mean even deeper cuts for state agencies.
“When you talk about across-the-board reductions, I don’t have any across-the-board reduction room left,” Vail said. “If the will of the Legislature is to cut the Department of Corrections, I would suggest they cut our caseload.”
Lawmakers could do that by changing sentencing guidelines or ordering early release of some prisoners, Vail said.
He said the corrections department will work with Teamsters Local 117, the union that represents Larch employees, on options for employees who already have been transferred from Larch to other prisons elsewhere in the state.
Clark County legislators, who worked across party lines to keep Larch open this year, were jubilant at Friday’s news.
State Rep. Jim Jacks, D-Vancouver, said the strong bipartisan effort helped convince the state to change course.
“When all of us in Clark County can hang together on an issue we can be pretty successful,” Jacks said. But he added, “I will not breathe a sigh of relief until budgets are passed at the end of the session.”
State Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, said the decision to keep Larch open “simply makes tremendous fiscal sense. It’s less expensive to house offenders at a facility such as Larch, where they can do important work in the community that provides big benefits for the public.”
Vail said it will be up to the Department of Natural Resources and State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark whether firefighter crews continue to be based at Larch. The crews had been scheduled to be disbanded Dec. 31.
“DNR will continue to have a fire crew presence at Larch, but we’re not sure of the number of crews at this time,” DNR spokesman Aaron Toso said Friday afternoon.
“The Larch location is an important site for our fire crews, given its proximity to the (Columbia) Gorge.”
State Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, said he knew when he attended Wednesday’s community forum that McNeil Island was under consideration for closure.
Clark County lawmakers had been arguing all along for closure of the expensive island prison instead of Larch, Zarelli said.
It never made any sense to close Larch, he said, because with its closure, the DNR would have had to hire contract crews to pay for fire control on state land in Southwest Washington.
Vail acknowledged that local legislators “spoke frequently and eloquently” on behalf of keeping Larch open.
In the end, he said, “it came down to money.”
