A coalition of more than 40 organizations united to fight California prison expansion filed a lawsuit May 6 to prevent an assembly bill that allows at least $12 billion toward prison construction—money, they say, that could be used to fund education.

Californians United for a Responsible Budget filed the lawsuit at Sacramento Superior Court against a number of state officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, to stop implementation of last year’s Assembly Bill 900. The bill authorized $7.4 billion in bonding authority to build space for nearly 42,000 new prison beds.

“This is the single biggest prison expansion in the nation, and, likely, the world,” said Brett Greenbaum, an SF State urban studies major and member of CURB. “And they are saying that, in spite of so many crucial things being cut, like education and Medi-Cal, this massive construction can go on.”

This is the second suit filed against AB 900, which is touted as the “Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Act of 2007.” The Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety’s lawsuit was shut down last year. CURB members said the bill constitutes an illegal bypass of voters’ constitutional right to vote on debt, and an illegal waste of scarce government resources.

“This lawsuit is a little different than last year’s because it emphasizes the waste spending in AB 900,” said Thomas Nolan, the attorney who filed the suit. “We’ve laid off 15,000 to 20,000 teachers. We can’t afford to educate our state, but we can find a way to build more prisons.”

CURB’s lawsuit is challenging the constitutionality of using lease-revenue financing for prison construction. Such financing is typically used to fund construction of structures that will generate revenue, such as bridges, convention centers and university classrooms. It does not require public approval.
“Using lease-revenue bonds to do this is a way for the government to borrow money to fund construction of infrastructure without voter consent,” Greenbaum said.

The coalition also released a report by economist Adam Werner, which explains in detail the financial and social implications of AB 900. According to Werner, the use of lease-revenue bonds to finance these facilities is “irrational from a purely economic perspective, given the cost differential between using lease-revenue and general obligation bonds.”

Werner calculated the costs to total an additional $2 billion in interest payments, and the total cost to taxpayers of borrowing $7.4 billion at $12 billion. He believed the decision to use lease-revenue financing to fund the bill was made to bypass voter approval.

He said using lease-revenue bonds to build prisons employs “sleight of hand financing that deprives voters a say on significant public policy and fiscal issues, costs taxpayers significantly more than general obligation bonds and, in this situation in particular will dramatically impact our state budget for generations to come with prison spending set to surpass higher education spending as a result of AB 900.”

“This shows us that they didn’t want to have to ask voters because, given the choice to do things like laying off teachers and funding prison expansion, most voters would say no,” Nolan said.

California accounts for 12 percent of the nation’s population and has the highest incarceration rates in the nation. As of Wednesday, the California Department of Corrections reported a population of nearly 170,000 inmates. In 2006, the United States saw its biggest increase in the number of people in prison, with California responsible for 20 percent of those inmates. The state has built 23 new prisons in 23 years.

Meanwhile, the governor has proposed to cut over $1 billion to higher education.

Nolan said public opinion has been solidly opposed to prison expansion in recent years, especially as the state grapples with an estimated $20 billion budget deficit and has proposed across the board cuts to every social service in California. Despite cuts to services such as public education, prison spending has increased. Between 1977 and 1999, total state and local expenditures on corrections increased by 946 percent, about 2.5 times the rate of increase of spending on all levels of education (360 percent), according to the Justice Policy Institute. In 2007-08, prison spending in California topped $10 billion, a 9 percent increase over the previous year.

Referencing the state of New York, which has watched its prison population decline in recent years following the adoption of more rehabilitation and reentry programs, Greenbaum said he hoped the lawsuit would bring the need for California prison reform—not construction—to the forefront of public discussion.

“We’re doing this for two reasons,” said Greenbaum, who is not listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “One, we want to stop the construction, but we also want to educate the general public that there are ways to stop the prison population from rising. There is a lot of horrible legislation that goes through out there under the guise of clever names, and this is another one of those.”