State Prison System Rolling All Columbus Offices into Single West-Side Facility

The Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (DRC) is consolidating about 500 employees now at several Central Ohio buildings into a single office in Franklinton, just west of downtown Columbus. Meanwhile, the department has identified about a third of the total jobs it needs to cut to meet its goal of reducing expenses by about $70 million over the biennium – its share of $733 million in statewide cuts identified by the governor earlier this year.

Department Director Terry Collins said Thursday that the office consolidation – which affects a handful of buildings at the department’s central office on Freeway Drive, plus the Adult Parole Authority on Alum Creek Drive – will save about $700,000 next fiscal year and about $3.2 million in the next decade.

“It will be the first time that we have all the central office operations in one location, so we think that will provide for more effective, efficient operations,” Collins said. “We’re excited about being closer to downtown because we do come to the Statehouse quite a bit.”

Collins said about 150 employees in exempted positions – non-union managers and supervisors – were told this week their positions would be eliminated by June 21. Other exempted staffers were bumped to different positions or facilities. With about 30 unclassified positions eliminated earlier this year, the department is a third of the way toward the target of cutting roughly 540 positions. (Collins outlined planned cuts of a total of 701 jobs in April, but about 160 of those were already vacant).

Parole officers, guards, teachers and nurses are exempt from the cuts because the department didn’t want to affect safety, DRC has said.

Also this week, Collins said the department sent out information packets about planned cuts to employees covered by the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, and soon after will move on to employees covered by the two other unions, Service Employees International Union 1199 and the Ohio Education Association. Collins hopes the process will be wrapped up by late July.

“It’s been a very tough time because many of our employees are career employees and many of them are being told their positions will be abolished,” Collins said. “It’s tough on them to become unemployed, it’s tough on the agency to revamp – I mean, their work doesn’t stop, someone else has to do a little more.”

As the department also looks at other ways to spend less, it is grappling with the fact that the inmate population has been increasing steadily and is likely to keep doing so. State prisons house just under 50,200 inmates now, and back in April the department projected that number could jump to 55,000 within two years. Collins wants more beds in community corrections programs to offset population growth and the associated cost of processing inmates.

“Regardless of how long you’re with us, one day or fifty years, it costs the same amount to bring you into the system,” he said. “I think we have very strong community corrections program in this state; unfortunately it’s full to its funded level.”

And, despite the protection of guard jobs, there’s always the concern posed by a shrinking staff paired with more inmates.

“The safety and security of our institutions is very good … but we’re asking people to do more and more each time our population goes up, which certainly is something that we have to be aware of and cautious of,” Collins said.