Salinas-area prison employees to lose jobs
Job cuts may help close the state's $21.3b deficit
BY MARIA INES ZAMUDIO • mzamudio@thecalifornian.com • May 27, 2009


More than 300 employees from the two state prisons in Soledad will be laid off as California tries to close its $21.3 billion budget deficit.

On Friday and over the weekend, 187 employees from Salinas Valley State Prison received layoff notices 143 of them going to correctional officers, said Lynelle Jolley, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Personnel Administration, which oversees employee pay and benefits.

At the Correctional Training Facility, 137 employees received the notices, with 101 of them going to correctional officers, Jolley said.

The other employees who received layoff notices include clerical workers and maintenance employees. It is unclear when the employees will stop working, she said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed up to 5,000 layoffs of state workers, and about half of those were to correctional officers, said Seth Unger, a spokesman with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The annual operating budget for Salinas Valley State Prison is $177 million. Of the 1,556 state employees who work there, 879 are correctional officers.

CTF has 1,119 correctional officers out of1,737 state employees. Its operating budget is $150 million.

It is unclear how much money the layoffs will save.

"We are concerned about our tax base and anyone losing their jobs," said Richard Cox, assistant city manager and police chief in Soledad, located several miles from the two state prisons. "We've had significant growth in the last few years, but everything has slowed down. There is a significant number of [prison] employees who live in Soledad. We are concerned about the impact."

To decrease the cost of operating the prison system, Schwarzenegger has also proposed moving illegal inmates to federal custody.

If the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency agrees to the proposal, the more-than 19,000 inmates with immigration holds in the 33 state prisons will be moved to federal prisons to finish their sentences, Unger said. Moving those inmates to federal custody would save the state '$182.1 million, he said.

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