Under §16.06 of the current agreement between the State of California and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association there is a little prison money maker called the "Institutional Vacancy Plan". While its purpose is to generate "salary savings", this misnomer is deceptive and leads the reader to believe that there are actually salaries that are being saved through implementation of an IVP. However, there is, in fact, nothing saved at all.
In reality, the agreed upon, budgeted Correctional Officer positions that were being funded by the taxpayer in the expectation that there will be an actual Correctional Officer filling the position, were being kept perpetually vacant and, by agreement, unfilled. The individual prisons continued to receive the money for these, unfilled positions which they utilized for purposes other than staffing. These funds have, reportedly, been referred to in the past as the "Warden's beer money".
In the preceding paragraph, I have spoken in the "past tense" due to the language in the Bargaining Unit 6 Memorandum of Understanding which indicates that the IVP was to be phased out, with the final death knell occurring on January 1, 2005. However, as we can remember, immediately upon Mr. Hickman's appointment as Secretary of CalDORC he closed the Correctional Officer Training Academy, thereby creating a critical shortage of the Correctional Officers needed to fulfill the final phase-out of the Institutional Vacancy Plan as described in the agreement1.
Generally, teams of accountants are required to asses the financial state of the California Department of Corrections, however, under the staffing emergency that was engineered by CalDORC, it's a safe bet to say that the IVP is still alive and well, only the position names and numbers have been changed. The vacancy factor for the vacation/holiday positions spawned by these perpetually vacant IVP positions is still there and still, presumably, being funded as a prison budget item. The only saving grace, contractually speaking, is to be found in §16.06 (D), in which the State is forgiven for their failure to "recruit and train new Correctional Officers".
Ask the Warden's what they're drinkin', Michelob or Bud Light?
Now that the Warden's beer money has, seemingly, been protected by the, State manufactured, inability to phase-out the IVP, through the hiring of new employees, by either rolling part-timers over to full timers or gathering the necessary bodies from the non-existent academy2, there are two other related issues to explore; 1) Budgetary Overrides, for free money, from which to pay overtime and 2) The Step-Down/Post-Diversion Plan.
Theoretically, all prisons receive a budget from which to pay ALL expenses related to running the prison. This budget is inclusive of such things as maintenance, salaries and overtime just to name a few.
Aside from the fact that it is cheaper to fill vacant positions with currently employed overtime officers than it is to hire new staff, thereby incurring additional benefits expenses (The Airline Pilot's Association has, in the past, gone on strike over this practice by the airlines), there is a secondary benefit and incentive for Wardens to fill vacant positions with overtime - enter the budgetary override.
Simply stated, Sacramento will bail-out Wardens who have exceeded their budgetary limit for overtime, with an infusion of the necessary cash, that comes directly from Sacramento, when the Wardens ask for it, through the "budgetary override" process. This "free money" is quite independent of the individual prison's annual budget and could be, fairly, characterized as CalDORC's "Secret Budget".
As a case in point of just how powerful a tool this is in the day-to-day operation of a prison, many years ago, when Warden L. Dicarlo was at the helm of the good ship CIM, someone forgot to submit the appropriate paperwork to Sacramento when CIM went over budget for overtime. There was pandemonium and rumors of "millions of dollars" missing from the prison coffers. Eventually, after the sweating of much blood, the situation was corrected and, presumably, the cash, once again, flowed like a flash flood.
Ensuring a long life for the "Secret Budget".
To ensure that the overtime continues to flow while, concomitantly, managing the State manufactured staffing emergency, there is another State manufactured contrivance which has its roots in §16.06 (J) of the BU6 MOU, and is known as the infamous, Step Down/Post Diversion Plan.
Originally intended to be an emergency measure that addressed temporary workload loss through natural causes and attrition, the Wardens may now use this process to perpetuate access to Sacramento's "Secret Budget", thereby eliminating the budgetary load on their individual prisons, by artificially eliminating workloads, such as visiting, when the overtime becomes unmanageable.
At CIM, with it's four facilities, this works like a rolling power black out with inmate programs being eliminated at one facility and the excess staff diverted, as needed, to fill other vacancies at other facilities. The Memorandum Of Understanding has been re-engineered by the Warden's to make a long-term staffing emergency workable, all at the expense of Correctional Staff health and public safety.
Isn't it comforting to know that the new Secretary (A) of CalDORC is from that creative financing bunch in the Department of Finance?
Its going to be a long, hot summer, pack a lunch.
For more reading on assignment irregularities at CIM, CLICK HERE.
Lorraine Bradley
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1 The funding for the scheduled activation of the holiday/vacation PY's on a state wide basis will be from the IVP.
2 Running these, newly created, Vacation/Holiday Relief postitons vacant and filling them with overtime doesn't count and would smack of "double dipping" since these positions are paid for in the individual prison's budget and then again with overtime from Sacramento's "Secret Budget". However, it is anomolous that the vacation relief rosters, that are being posted around CIM, for many of the relief positions, reportedly show only the vacation and holiday relief position number and do not list the name of the Correctional Officer assigned to that post, only "vacant" is inserted where the name should appear.
