Alabama House Speaker calls for pause on Escambia prison construction project

The speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives Thursday called for construction on a men’s prison in Escambia County to stop amid rising costs and delays in the completion of another prison in Elmore County.

In a Thursday letter to Gov. Kay Ivey, House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, expressed frustration that her administration had ignored “every request from the Legislature to press pause” on building the Escambia facility and said the Alabama Department of Corrections had “lost all control” over construction of the Elmore facility, named for Ivey.

“Committing taxpayers to another major financial obligation under these circumstances, without first addressing the cost overruns, delays, and apparent failures in project management, is an unacceptable risk to public funds and a failure of fiscal responsibility,” Ledbetter said in his letter. “To make matters worse, you will be exiting office in less than three months, leaving the next administration to clean up the mess.”

The letter represented the first major break between Ivey and legislative leaders over the two 4,000-bed facilities. The Legislature in 2021 approved $1.3 billion for the construction of the two prisons, but the costs of the Elmore facility alone have reached $1.25 billion.

Ledbetter and other lawmakers in 2023 appeared resigned to the cost increases. He said at the time that inflation had affected the cost of all goods and services, like construction. But lawmakers in both parties have grown increasingly critical as expenses mount.

Thursday’s letter came a few weeks after the state sold $190 million in bonds to a division of Regions Bank for the construction of the Escambia facility; a few hours before a meeting of the Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority, which oversees funding for prison construction; five days before state elections and three months before Ivey leaves office.

The governor’s office said Thursday ACIFA approved a construction contract for the Escambia prison.

Ivey in a statement rejected Ledbetter’s call to stop construction, saying problems plaguing Alabama’s prison system had been neglected for “far too long” and that her administration had worked to address them.

“My administration has been committed and dually-focused on protecting taxpayer dollars while moving forward with these critical and necessary public safety projects,” Ivey said in the news release. “Throughout the appropriations process over the last five years, I am extremely proud that we have been able to save the money necessary to make these facilities a reality in a fiscally responsible way.”

The Alabama Department of Corrections announced earlier in October that the completion of the Gov. Kay Ivey Correctional Complex in Elmore County would be delayed.

Ledbetter wrote that he met with the governor’s staff and ADOC Commissioner Greg Lovelace in July and was told the Elmore facility would not be completed until “sometime between March and May 2027.”

The letter said he told staff and the ADOC of his concerns with moving forward with financing a second prison using taxpayer-backed debt with the Elmore site one year behind schedule and cost overruns that total about $635 million.

The total cost of the project has increased to about $2.2 billion, according to Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, who is a member of the ACIFA.

ACIFA Thursday approved the Escambia construction on a 6-1 vote. Rep. Rex Reynolds, R-Huntsville, the chair of the House Ways and Means General Fund Committee, which oversees Corrections financing, said Thursday he voted against the agreement.

“We have never said we did not want to move forward on Escambia, we just felt like we are in such an administrative posture with trying to get the first prison complete that we maybe should delay that prison until we can be sure,” Reynolds said in an interview Thursday.

He said there could be a contractual problem with the prison in Elmore County that could cost the state even more money.

“Those are the kinds of decisions we need to know before we work on the Escambia prison,” Reynolds said.

Albritton voted to move forward with the construction project.

“If you would take a look at any other capital project of this size, or even half this size, through the nation, through the same timeframe, you will see the same issues,” Albritton said. “Between costs of labor, between materials and COVID costs that have skyrocketed … so do you want to wait to let it go up some more?”

Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, has consistently criticized the cost and delays associated with the project.

“I am not sure what from recent history we saw that gave us any confidence that ADOC and this administration could complete this project,” he said. “We are still nowhere near finished with what is now a well over a billion-dollar Elmore County facility, to now borrow more money to push this facility over a billion dollars. It is a bad idea, it was a bad idea then, it is a worse idea now.”

Speaking at a campaign event in Auburn Thursday evening, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones said he didn’t “get involved in Republican Party squabbles.”

“I’m going to get elected in five days, and then come January we’re going to have a new prison commissioner,” he said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of a lot of things. It was the Legislature that approved all this. There’s a lot of blame to go around for all the problems that we’ve got in our prison system right now. I’ll let them fight it out.”