REACTIONARY UNIONS Imprisoned by timidity

From the Los Angeles Times
EDITORIAL

REACTIONARY UNIONS Imprisoned by timidity …


April 21, 2006

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER hasn't just abandoned his campaign promise
to fight the special interests that dominate Sacramento politics. He
has thrown it from his favorite Hummer and driven over it. His craven
surrender to the tyrannical prison guards union is so complete that
his aides have been subverting the authority of the state corrections
chief by consulting union officials on her choices for warden
positions and other jobs.

And that, according to one insider, is the explanation for the
resignation Wednesday of Jeanne S. Woodford, acting secretary of the
state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Woodford quit
just two months into the job; her predecessor had departed because he
felt the governor was not backing him in the face of resistance by
the guards to reforms.

The union has long fought nearly every effort at turning the state
prison system into an organization that rehabilitates as well as
punishes. The result is a spectacularly dysfunctional operation.
Prisons are running at about 200% of capacity because inmates are
simply warehoused instead of getting the training or drug
rehabilitation that might keep them from committing crimes once they
are released. Woodford, a reformer, clearly didn't want to be just a
figurehead.

Schwarzenegger hurriedly replaced Woodford on Thursday with James
Tilton, a numbers cruncher from the Department of Finance who will
run the department until the governor finds a permanent chief.
Whether Schwarzenegger first begged union leaders for their approval
before appointing Tilton is unknown, but it wouldn't be surprising.

Under the cynical calculus of political consultants, Schwarzenegger
is probably doing the smart thing. The governor is up for reelection
and doesn't want the guards to actively oppose him. Of course, the
public embarrassment of having two prison chiefs quit in as many
months as the system degenerates into chaos isn't great for his image
either, but few voters know what's going on behind prison walls.

Smart as they might be in the short term, however, Schwarzenegger's
moves are disastrous for the prisons. And they show he is nowhere
close to being the kind of governor he said he would be.

In February, a federal judge placed the prisons' healthcare system
under receivership, appointing an administrator who started this week
and who has broad powers to hire and fire and controls a $1.2-billion
budget. It was an extreme but necessary step given the negligence and
incompetence of a healthcare system in which one inmate a week was
dying needlessly — despite big financial outlays by the state. In
2004, the same judge threatened to put the entire state corrections
system under receivership.

Sadly, given the political clout of the guards union and the failure
of the state's executive and legislative branches to stand up to it,
that may be the only way to fix what's wrong with California's prisons.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times