Georgia governor seeks to spend hundreds of millions more on prisons

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Georgia governor seeks to spend hundreds of millions more on prisons

2025-01-08 07:49 Last Updated At：08:01

ATLANTA (AP) — Gov. Brian Kemp is proposing a big burst of new spending on Georgia’s prisons, including planning another new correctional facility and launching an extensive renovation program.

Legislators are seeking solutions to a wide range of problems plaguing prisons that have sparked a federal investigation. Among them: a sharp increase in prisoner deaths; high rates of employee turnover and arrests for criminal activity; and a persistent problem with contraband cellphones and drugs.

Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver on Tuesday unveiled a plan to amend the current year’s budget to spend $458 million before the end of June, and to increase spending in the year beginning July 1 by another $145 million.

“Public safety is the number one priority of state government, and that is why we have taken a comprehensive and deliberate approach to strengthening law enforcement and improving our corrections system," Kemp said in a statement.

The meeting itself was unusual, with Oliver making budget requests before lawmakers are sworn in for the new two-year term on Monday and before the Republican Kemp presents the rest of his budget later next week.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, a Dublin Republican, repeatedly expressed impatience, calling on Oliver to speed work and saying Kemp’s decision to outline his budget now showed how seriously lawmakers are taking the problem.

“It is out of the ordinary, and I think it shows the emphasis that he and us, collectively, are putting on this issue,” Hatchett said.

It’s part of a burst of spending on prisons across the South as conservatives focus on securely housing prisoners and back away from efforts to release more of them. In Georgia, that’s in part because many nonviolent offenders are no longer in prison. Oliver told lawmakers that three-quarters of the system’s 50,000 inmates were convicted of violent crimes.

Alabama is building a $1.1 billion, 4,000-bed prison just north of Montgomery whose price tag has soared. Arkansas has set aside more than $400 million f or a new 3,000-bed prison, although the state hasn’t given an estimate of total cost or said when work will begin on it. And last year, Louisiana earmarked at least $100 million to upgrade facilities, including space to separate 17-year-olds charged as adults from older prisoners.

Georgia is already building a 3,000-bed prison near Davisboro in Washington County. The spending plan calls for another $47 million to furnish that prison, atop the $451 million that lawmakers approved last year to build the structure, which would house offenders one to a cell. Oliver told lawmakers that the department wants another $40 million to start planning another prison, which Oliver indicated would likely have about 1,500 single-bed cells.

Much of the money would be one-time expenditures made out of Georgia’s billions in surplus cash, but those one-time expenditures would be stretched out over years. Some items, including hiring additional prison guards and paying them more, would become permanent parts of the state budget.

Oliver said prisons need 2,600 more employees to be fully staffed. He proposes hiring 882 more officers to fill part of the gap, or about 110 every three months, saying “Trying to hire 2,600 people in a fiscal year is just not possible.”

Oliver said the department has increased the number of prison guards for three years in a row after seeing employment numbers plummet during the pandemic, but also proposed a 4% pay raise, saying further boosts in salary are needed.

One big focus is renovating current prisons, particularly to install new locks and control systems, but Oliver says Georgia must first empty out some current prison beds so crews can work unimpeded.

“The goal of this project is to do half a facility and actually do half the buildings at a time," Oliver said. "What’s taking so long right now is we can do only one building at a time.”

He wants to contract for 446 additional private prison beds as well as buy four 126-bed modular prison facilities. Some lawmakers questioned the $93 million purchase of the modular prisons, suggesting the state should rent more private prison space instead.

Oliver also proposed a $50 million plan to combat cell phones inside prisons and drones dropping drugs, phones and other contraband from the outside.

Thousands flee as wildfires burn out of control in and around Los Angeles and homes are destroyed

2025-01-08 19:50 Last Updated At：20:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California firefighters battled wind-whipped wildfires that tore across the Los Angeles area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as the fires burned uncontained early Wednesday.

The flames from a fire that broke out Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the inland foothills northeast of LA spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living center had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot. The residents — one as old as 102 — waited there in their bedclothes as the night sky glowed red from flames and embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and even construction vans arrived to take them to safety.

Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit “Surfin' USA.” In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.

The traffic jam on Palisades Drive prevented emergency vehicles from getting through and a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path. Video along the Pacific Coast Highway showed widespread destruction of homes and businesses along the famed roadway.

Pacific Palisades resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.

“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming."

A third wildfire started around 10:30 p.m. and quickly prompted evacuations in Sylmar, a San Fernando Valley community that is the northernmost neighborhood in Los Angeles. The causes of all three fires were under investigation.

Flames were being pushed by Santa Ana winds topping 60 mph (97 kph) in some places Tuesday, increasing to 70 miles an hour (112 kph) by early Wednesday, according to reports received by the National Weather Service in Los Angeles. They could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months.

The situation prompted the Los Angeles Fire Department to take the rare step of putting out a plea for off-duty firefighters to help. It was too windy for firefighting aircraft to fly, further hampering the fight.

Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X early Wednesday that California had deployed more than 1,400 firefighting personnel to combat the blazes. “Emergency officials, firefighters, and first responders are all hands on deck through the night to do everything possible to protect lives,” Newsom said.

The erratic weather caused President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. He remained in Los Angeles, where smoke was visible from his hotel, and was briefed on the wildfires. The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a grant to help reimburse California for the firefighting cost.

Officials didn't give an estimate of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, but they said about 30,000 residents were under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures were under threat. Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the scene and said many homes had burned.

The fire burned down Temescal Canyon, a popular hiking area surrounded by dense neighborhoods of multimillion-dollar homes. Flames jumped famous Sunset Boulevard and burned parts of the Palisades Charter High School, which has been featured in many Hollywood productions including the 1976 horror movie “Carrie,” the 2003 remake of “Freaky Friday” and the TV series “Teen Wolf.”

By evening the flames had spread into neighboring Malibu and several people there were being treated for burn injuries and a firefighter had a serious head injury and was taken to a hospital, according to Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott.

By early Wednesday, the Eaton fire, which started around 6:30 p.m. the day before, had quickly burned 1.6 square miles (4 square kilometers), according to fire officials. The Hurst fire jumped to 500 acres (202 hectares) and the Palisades fire, which started around around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and sent up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across Los Angeles, had destroyed 4.5 square miles (11.6 square kilometers) according to Angeles National Forest. The fires were at 0% containment as of early Wednesday.

“By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods,” Newsom warned residents, saying the worst of the winds were expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday. He declared a state of emergency.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 200,000 people were without power in Los Angeles County, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us, due to the strong winds.

Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season. Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May.

The neighborhood, which borders Malibu about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of downtown LA, includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish School when he heard the fire was nearby. Meanwhile, he said embers flew into his wife's car as she tried to evacuate.

“She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.

Adams said he had never witnessed anything like this in the 56 years he’s lived there. He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding.

“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said.

Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and past palm trees on a hill near his home. The towering orange flames billowed among the landscaped yards between the homes.

“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.

Some trees and vegetation on the grounds of the Getty Villa were burned by late Tuesday, but staff and the museum collection remain safe, Getty President Katherine Fleming said in a statement. The museum located on the eastern end of the Pacific Palisades is a separate campus of the world-famous Getty Museum that focuses on the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The fire also burned Palisades Charter High School.

Film studios canceled two movie premieres due to the fire and windy weather, and the Los Angeles Unified School District said it temporarily relocated students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area.

Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco, Hallie Golden in Seattle, video journalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles, Ethan Swope in Pasadena and Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.