House Standing Committee on Finance

Pick up side conversations. So as much as possible, try to keep that limited. Otherwise we'll end up in the center. So I think with that we can get started if the Governor wants to come up and get us going.

Good afternoon, Law Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee, Will Kane, Senior Advisor for the Office of the Governor. First, if I just may, I'd just like to introduce my the policy team for the Governor. So we have behind me Dan Cocci and Rika Kaneshige, Angie Chapman and Tori Nakata. So you'll be seeing all of us.

If you need anything, please reach out. We're always here and as many of you know, I'm always available. So we had just have. The governor's office just has one request. According to HRS Section 36, we're statutorily required to request $100,000 in non recurring General funds to support the gubernatorial transition costs for FY27.

So essentially this is to ensure the continuity of the Executive branch operations and an orderly transition process during an election year. So beyond that, you have our written testimony. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

All right, Members, any questions?

I have a question. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for being here. Well, what kind of transition?

Well, if there is a transition, it would be during the election year. We're hopeful that the voters would, you know, re elect Governor and stuff. But if there happens to be a change then, then the state is prepared to manage that transition.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Members, any additional questions?

Just a quick question.

You know, I guess the decisions that came down in the budget recommendations from the governor's office, are any of those taking into consideration, you know, the money from the green fee with the freeze that's happening in the court cases, is there any adjustments you guys are anticipating or kind of pivoting already, or is there? No.

Was that not a consideration when you guys are making this year's recommendations?

So right now there's a placeholder request under budget finance for the full amount that was expected to be collected. Right now we are not anticipating making any adjustments because as you may have heard, the Ninth Circuit made a temporary injunction on the collection only of the part of the law that applies to the cruise lines.

So we're expecting a decision in the next month or two, approximately on whether that would be more permanent. I'm not a lawyer, so whatever the terminology is. And then of course, the court case would still continue to move forward.

So right now we're not anticipating making changes, but you know, that may occur as we move forward in the legislative session.

Remembers anything additional? Anyone else? No.

That was very quick, very efficient. No. What's that?

Do you have anything else?

No, I'm good. Thank you. I appreciate it. Hello.

We're going to recess briefly to allow the transition to the next. Just reconvening the Committee on Finance Briefings. We're going to open up with the Department of Corrections and Director.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chairman of the Committee. I'm Tommy Johnson, the Director of Department of Corrections Rehabilitation. I apologize for my voice. I'm just getting over the flu. I kind of feel set up. I got a guy come ask 400,000 and my budget is 330 million.

So with the Chair's indulgence, I'll just summarize our testimony so we can get right to the tables if you like and then we can go over anything else you like regarding the budget. So in short, thank you very much. So we have some short term and long term goals. I'll just go over the short term goals.

First is reduce overcrowding to improve working positions in our community correctional facilities and our prison. Fill our vacancies. We have about a 28% vacancy right now. Address mental health services and expansion of mental health services statewide to improve delivery of services to those in need. And update our correctional master plan.

The ten year plan was last updated in 2003 with respect to our long term goals. Is planned to relocate the Kauai Community Correctional Center. It's in a flood inundation zone. The Department of Transportation is planning on widening the highway.

And so the front of the facility where we have those temporary and shelters that we still have, they'll be wiped out. The facility tends to flood every time it rains hard. The Legislature did provide us with $20 million earlier for planning and design and to purchase the land for relocating the facility.

But we will be coming in asking for the funding at some point to relocate the facility itself. We plan to. We want to plan to build a new jail in West Oahu. About 34% or so. Up to 40% of the of the detainees at the current ACCC are from the Kona side.

We believe that it's unfair one to have the families drive to the Hilo for visitations only to find out that's canceled. But also we're putting vehicles on the road five days a week back and forth to court. We're putting 45,000 miles on the vehicle a year. And so we're running through a lot of vehicles.

And it's better for the detainees and Inmates to be in the communities they're from so they can retransition back into the facility. So we will be bringing employment opportunities via the staff at a facility and purchase of local goods and services for that facility to the Kona area.

We plan to relocate the Maui Community Correctional center at some point down the line. We also plan to relocate the Hawaii Community Correctional Center. If you visited the Hawaii Community Correctional center, the neighborhood is built up around us and we're kind of locked in and we can expand out anywhere.

And that facility has outlived its usefulness, if you will. And all our jails, to be honest with you, are not designed for the population we currently have. And none of them are designed to provide the rehabilitative space that's needed on a program. Space.

We plan to bring back as many out of state inmates as possible, providing we have the room and right now we don't have the space to bring them back.

At present we keep about 1,000 inmates in Arizona and we may be sending additional inmates out of state in order to comply with a recent law that passed last year. More to that, more to that in the future. We have about 1855 permanent authorized positions in the corrections division. We have about 424 vacancies.

Our staffing shortages in the ACO ranks are about 28%. That's down from about 36%. We increased our recruitment efforts via TV, radio ads, theater ads. Last summer we were on every bus on Oahu. We held eight classes as opposed to five classes. In 2024 we held eight classes.

In 2026 we held three classes on the Big island which helped us because we took the academy to the neighbor island. But we still have a long way to go. Jail overcrowding remains a problem mainly with our pre trail population. The pre trail population as an example, our entire in state prison and jail population is about 2,827.

Of that population, about 1073 or 38% are pretrial felons and pretrial misdemeanors. And so our neighbor island jails are particularly overcrowded HCCC Maui to some degree. But OCCC is really overcrowded. As an example, OCCC is designed has a bed capacity of 628. It can design to hold operational capacity of 954.

Right now we have 906, which means we do have people sleeping on the floor in that facility. With respect to the Wild Community Correctional Center Replacement Project, as you know, Legislature over the last few years allocated several million dollars to us recently, $30 million.

15 million last year, 15 million this year to complete the planning and design and the bridging documents process that will be. We plan to locate that over now on part of the land where the animal quarantine facility is. And so we will be coming in asking for funding next year for that project to complete it.

With respect to population management, our population has gone up and down over the last decade and a half, but the population has gone down from the mid-2007 where we had about 6,000 people in custody. Right now we have a total of about 3,681 folks in custody. But we're still overcrowded except in our minimum security prison facilities.

To give you an example, Kalani Correctional Facility can hold up to 200. We have 92 there. A wealth of a correctional facility can hold up to 294. We have about 172. So you ask yourself well why do we have bed space open in those facilities? And we have people on mainland.

Quite frankly the folks on the mainland have the longer term sentences, more serious felony offenses. So they don't qualify for a minimum security facility with no fence at all. They need to be in a medium security facility.

Eventually they work their way down the classification process to the Waiawa Correctional Facility or Kulani and then on to work fertile. But they're just not there yet. It's our jails where we have the major over crowding problems.

Respect to our budget request for FIS 26-27 for PSD Healthcare, we requested 35 physicians as part of the settlement agreement in the Opilando lawsuit case. So I have the deputy Director Kendall Moer here to go into detail if you have that question.

But in short, in April of this year we agreed with attorney Eric Seitz and Federal Magistrate Rod from Trader to settle the Opel lawsuit. Providing we hire two mental health experts to come in and look at our mental health process and assessment process and how we provide care and that we would follow their recommendations.

We received their report in June of this year and one of those recommendations was to add additional positions, different classes of work. In addition to that we're trying to staff an infirmary at OCCC which we currently do not have at our largest jail. And we need the infirmary.

So our budget request and the Governor agreed to the 35 positions. What you'll see is those positions are partially funded to the tune of about 202point just under $2.7 million. We asked the Governor to at least give us the positions to get them on the books and we'll come in for the funding as we fill the positions.

If we didn't get the positions on the books to establish them and then to add them to the org chart, we'd be a year behind and then we risk federal intervention with the level of care we provide. So that's why we have the position.

You'll see there's only partial funding because we need the positions on the books and then we can then strategically look at phasing in the funding for those positions as we move forward. In the supplemental budget year we have 2,268 permanent positions, 43 temporary positions. All means of financing for 2027 is 319,712,228.

Our CIP requests are indicated about $45 million. It's indicated in the tables we have. We'd asked for $5 million for statewide security fencing at the facilities, $2 million to comply with the DOJ order regarding removal of ADA barriers and improvements to our facilities. 15 million in General Administration lump sum CIP.

15 million for the new community Kauai Correctional Center. 3 million for fence wide repairs, deferred maintenance, $3 million for the mocker work furlough repair and renovation. So even though we're asking for $3 million for repair and renovations, that is to bring that facility somewhat up to code.

Our original plan for the new OCCC was to have a 1300 bed facility with a CTC, a community transition center outside Defense and a thousand bed facility. We decided to move the CTC to the Luoca work furlough site, raise that site and rebuild and then put the work expand the work further program there.

Which makes more sense because it's right there in the urban corridors, it's there by mass transportation and most of the employment is in town anyway. Now you probably heard news stories recently where people said, oh Department of Correction Rehabilitation is trying to build a super jail. We're not building the super jail.

We're building a jail to fit our needs. The over chronically overcrowded for decades. And if you and I invite the Committee to go visit facility, the conditions are abhorrent because we haven't been provided the money to upkeep that facility or the rest of the facilities for that matter. We have hundreds of deferred maintenance projects.

Deferred maintenance means no money. The problem is we don't get the money to repair the facility. Instead of paying $50,000 for a maintenance contract on a cooler, we have no money. The cooler system breaks down. Now we pay $500,000 to replace the cooler.

So I just want to put that in your mind that Correctional facilities operate 24/7. They don't close after 12 hours. They don't close after eight hours. They're not schools or office buildings. We have to operate 247. So there's a lot of wear and tear on the infrastructure of the facility. The water, the sewer, the furnishings.

And then there's $2 million for renovations for the medical and mental health unit at the Maui Community Correctional Center. And so that summarizes our budget, our request. I'll submit to your questions. I can leave now or stay for questions.

I think it makes sense. Maybe we'll start with some questions now and then again we'll kind of cycle through and maybe circle back later.

But Members, do you have any questions for the Director?

Thank you again for coming here. I'm sorry. I'm glad you're feeling better. Good enough at least. The Hale Nani facility in Hilo, the like a workforce development program for inmates who are reintegrating, I believe. I didn't hear you mention it.

Maybe I missed it. But what's is it, Is that capacity? Can you provide some insight into that facility?

The Hale Nani Work Referral Center is part of the Hawaii Community Correctional Center. It's about 10 miles from the main facility. Not only do we have the recurrent program there for males, we also have pretrial and pretrial felons and sentenced misdemeanors there on a separate side. A separate.

First off, we're not at capacity at facility yet. We are pretty much at capacity at HCCC. As an example, ACCC has a design capacity of 206. So when I say design, that's ideal. But operation capacity is 226. Meaning we can handle 226. Right now our census there is 279.

The vast majority of that is pretrial felons and pre trial misdemeanors. The referral program for those guys who are transitioning out of prison, back through the jails, work furlough, community reintegration and resocialization.

So right now we're not at capacity at that facility because folks from the Halawa who are from the Big Island in the mainland will transition eventually to Kulani and then down to Hale.

Thank you. One more question with Kulani, I under. I was speaking with some folks who I deem reliable, but just confirming with you, is that facility right now limited by water Resources or is it just because of its lack of security?

No, it's limited that we don't have the inmates that meet the classification requirements. That's our primary sex offender treatment facility. It's about an hour and a half up Steinbeck highway down from Hale Nani. It has a design and bed capacity of 200. We have 92. So it's less than.

And the reason is, again, we don't have the inmates to meet the classification requirements. So we took it upon ourselves last year to hire Janet Davidson from the University of Chaminade to take a look at our inmate classification system to see if we were over classifying people. And so what we found, though, is two different things.

One is that our jail instrument. There is some deviation there. So we need to take a look at that. But our prison assessment instrument is right on track where it should be. So what that tells us is, is that we're doing okay. So my concern was. I thought that. I'll give you an example.

If an inmate commits a major misconduct, it's 18 months. So they go to a high level of custody. I think we should have a review every six months to see if we can bring that person down. Otherwise, he or she's doing 18 months.

There's no reason for them to show good behavior if there's no light at the end of the tunnel. So our classification shouldn't be time driven. It should be event driven based on behaviors. They're not there because they're perfect. They make mistakes.

But when they make those mistakes, once they recoup and they've shown they're able to comply for six months, we should look at the reevaluation. That's the kind of things we're doing. We're trying to move people downstream faster without jeopardizing public safety.

I hope that answers your question.

No, thank you. I appreciate it and appreciate all the work you're doing. It's tough work.

Quick question. Thanks for being here. Director. What? Can you remind me what the cost is to house an individual in either our jails or prisons here in Hawaii? And then also what it costs to house individuals if we send them to the mainland?

Okay. It's approximately $330 a day to house an inmate here. And that's soup to nuts. That's everything. It's a little over $100 to house someone on the mainland. That doesn't include the transportation costs. The transportation costs. We do Transportation costs about four movements a year at about 5 to 650,000 per movement.

That's a complete plane with a crew that does multiple stops, that picked up multiple inmates at different locations, drop them off, pick up and take them back. So it's a little over $100 a day on the mainland. And then what was the transportation cost? I'm sorry?

It's about depending on the size of the plane we get in the team, it can cost us as little as 500,000, but as much as 650,000.

But I want to make it clear that plane would start out here, stop at different facilities, pick up, go to the mainland, drop off, bring back the next day and drop off at the different islands.

Okay. And then do we hear house any out of state individuals in any of our jails or prisons? Women's prison.

Do we have people from out of state coming to Hawaii to be housed here? We only have very few. So we have people who are arrested here that are from other jurisdictions that have warrants in the system.

We alert the jurisdiction, we pick them up and they're in our custody, have 48 hours, some amount of time to come and get them, or we have to release them unless they're pending new charges.

Here we have people from what we do on Interstate Compact, we accept a high profile case from another facility, from another jurisdiction via the western Interstate Compact agreement, and we send one of our high profile cases or problem children, for lack of a better term, to that jurisdiction of housing there. So we do one for one swaps.

So it's a transfer?

It's a transfer.

Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. Members, anything additional for the Director?

Go ahead. Just briefly, I did read about the OCCC and you mentioned about how it's overcrowded. We all know. Could you give us a brief update and maybe the timeline on where we are and maybe a completion day.

So now if everything goes as scheduled with the funding we currently have, the RFP will go out next year for the project and the bridging documents. The project is not slated to be completed until 2032. That is providing a couple of critical things happen.

One, that the Department of Agriculture obtains funding and relocates the animal quarantine facility, which is currently on the site that we need to occupy. And part of the funding that we will come in and ask for, which is 25% of the overall projected cost of the facility would be for demolition of the animal quarantine facility.

If all goes as planned, we do the RFP next year, come in and ask for the money, we would come to the Legislature for Concurrent Resolution so that when we go out for the RFP. The developers out there will see that the state is serious and then we'll then bid on the project.

The second thing would be that we would need to look at the work furlough program and how we're going to make those adjustments in the interim while we build the new OCCC. But right now the project is slated to be completed in 2020.

Thanks, Director. I have a couple of questions around those 35 new positions resulting in the lawsuit, I guess to start. What kind of healthcare positions specifically are you guys mandated to add?

Okay, so I want to make it clear that the. The lawsuit was settled in April with the understanding that we would follow the recommendations not yet known to us of the two experts we were going to hire.

We hired them, they did a combined report and in the report they recommended certain things and some of those were the removal of certain identified inmates from our custody and care that we could not provide the level of care they need, but do not meet the forensic requirements of the state hospital.

The positions, the 35 positions, I believe they are primarily there are 65 or 65 psychiatrists. They are, I think, Romey Glywell, our healthcare administrator.

Good afternoon. Romey Glidewell, Healthcare Division Administrator, Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation. The PI position was up into, I believe it's five or six psychiatrists. I think it may be six. We settled on nine nurse practitioners, specifically the PMHMPs, which the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, they do an additional two years.

They're a mid level provider, which at our last recruitment we actually had 18 applicants for one position. So we feel we'll have a high likelihood of filling those positions. And then each provider, so those would be the psychiatrist and the nurse practitioners would need an RN to run their clinic and to ensure med compliance and med distribution.

So we asked for 18 RNs to help supplement and bear verify all of those pieces of provider clinic, taking labs, pulling off orders. Every provider clinic adds a significant amount of work for the nurses that we already have. So we didn't want to overburden them already. So that's what we settled on for those 35 positions.

Okay, follow up then. So except for the one where you had, you know, a lot of people applying for the one position. These other positions though are kind of existing positions that I think. Are there still vacancies. Existing vacancies for those. But we just have to add more because of the recommendation.

Currently we have 4.5 psychiatry positions and we're only vacant one. 2.5 positions which we're currently recruiting for. We are hopeful that we will be able to get more psychiatry positions and the RN positions locally on Oahu. Here we actually have them filled in our facilities. We do struggle with some of the outer islands, Maui for instance.

We always have vacancies, but we're actually at a high fill rate right now for our ends.

Okay, and did the recommendation or the settlement have a timeline that we have to Staff up or, you know, like, do the recommendations by.

No, we just agreed that we would follow the recommendation. So that's why it was critically important that we get the positions on the books and then strategically phase in filling the positions based on the need that we saw and where the need was.

Thank you.

Dr. Johnson. In 2025, we saw an extraordinary number of confirmed and apparent suicides in custody. And I think it. I appreciate the request for 35 positions, and I'm grateful that the Governor also recognized the importance of that request. I'm wondering if there are other.

Thank you,

Maybe other budget requests or other budgetary additions you might see as useful that could be directed towards preventative programs, changes in facilities, and other measures that would help speak to that need.

A couple of things. So we are entering into a pilot project with a company called the. The Falcon Group, and they have a predictive model supposedly for suicides. So we're in the process of implementing that as a pilot project.

The second thing we're looking at, that doesn't cost anything now, so we're going to see how it works out.

Then we're also looking at some type of ankle bracelet that monitors the biometrics of someone that can tell us immediately if the person's restoration rate is too high, heart rate goes up, some kind of issue of medical distress, and so that we can send someone to that location immediately.

So that we're looking at now to see if there are products out there that can help us do that. Because the way the facilities are set up, they're holding attic raiders with a bunch of nooks and crannies. And so we think that would be one interim fix. And this pilot project with the Falcon Group is another.

But honestly, it also comes down to additional training for staff and an awareness of the cellmates that if you see that your cellmate is in distress, please let us know. We had a recent suicide where the person notified their significant other that they felt depressed and felt like terminating their life.

And that person didn't tell us until we contacted them after the person had successfully killed themselves to do the notification. And so had we known, we could have intervened. And this person, I want to make it clear they weren't on our radar for any type of suicidal ideations or behaviors.

One of the other challenges we face is that because of our limited infrastructure and the age of our facilities, we don't have the space to take someone in all facilities from suicide watch to Safety watch, then the General population, ideally, that's what you want to do. You Want to slowly put them back in the General population.

But in Safety Watch, you have people around them, they're more integrated but not fully integrated and then down to General population. So that hinders us a great deal in all of our facilities because they're all old and.

Quick follow up. So I hear you saying changes in infrastructure would be helpful. And you've also talked about your CIP requests for facilities. Is the additional training that you mentioned budgeted included in this budget request?

The additional training our training services division can handle will handle with our healthcare division for suicide prevention. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Members, any additional questions?

Director? Yes. Why does it cost three times higher. Than the mainland example for $100 you pay for.

Well, there's a lot of. There's a lot of factors, but the main factor is the cost in Hawaii is very high. Just think about it. Corrections officer's base salary is less than $70,000 a year. Year. You can't buy an apartment here. However, the cost of living in places like Arizona is significantly less.

You can buy a old house, that's 6570,000, an apartment for maybe 45. It may be run down, but it may be something livable. Look at the cost of milk, for example. Look at the cost of food and fuel.

So also on the mainland, and I hate to say this, sometimes private entities can operate more efficiently than government entities. We put so many cross check imbalances in place that add to the cost of government. I'll give you an example. I travel to the neighbor islands for one day.

I come back, I have a parking pass for the airport. But now I got to do a bunch of paperwork for a $20 check. Now ask yourself this, how much does it cost to give me that $20 check for per diem.

So I think what we need to do is look at how do we streamline government to make government less costly, more efficient, but at the same time maintain cross check imbalances. We need to have an efficient system.

One more question.

Sure. So with 20% vacancy rate, I'm wondering what percentage of your operating budget is absorbed by emergency overtime and those kinds of costs.

Do you have a breakdown? Having a roundabout figure. So we have a. So we're clear, we have a vacancy rate of about 28%. With our corrections office, that's down from about 34%. It's come down because of our recruitment efforts.

But I want to make it clear that we have some of the most dedicated staff that are heroes that come to work day in and day out knowing they're going to get stuck and miss their anniversary, their child's birthday or some other occasion. But we also have some staff that don't show up to work.

We have some staff who are abusing the Federal Medical Leave act and some people who are abusing sick leave.

We have some staff who will call in sick on their shift, come in the very next shift to work overtime, and then because their regular shift is less than 12 hours away, they get paid overtime for their regular shift because there's what's called a lapse 10, which is less than 12 hours.

If you're talking, we have people who are abusing FMLA by saying, zero, you can't keep me. I have approved fmla, but then come in on next shift and we're cover time. So we're in a pitch battle now along with the State of Michigan with the U.S. Department of labor who says this delay is denied.

So let me give you an example. I gave the Department of Labor and their answer to me was completely ridiculous.

They said, if I had someone watching an inmate one on one on suicide watch and that person told me at the end of their shift that they have family leave and I can't keep them until I can find somebody to cover to come in. I said, well, I can't let this person commit suicide.

Their question to me was, well, don't you have reserve workforce? No, it doesn't work that way. Their answer to me was, you figured out, but you let that person go. Well, here's the thing. I would rather take the fine from the US DOJ than have a settlement agreement of a million dollars because this person killed themselves.

So I think we were kind of in a catch 22. And when President Reagan originally enacted the FMLA law in 1980, it was to protect workers jobs from abuses from the employer. Now it's turned around where some employees, and not all because we have some outstanding employees, I want to make that clear.

But some are abusing FMA and sick leave. So we're doing the work with that. We've been working with UPW for about seven to eight months now.

What's a new improvement, new attendance program to try to address these staff members who even with seniority can pick their shift, their post and their days off and they're still not coming to work. To me, that's ridiculous. And so we're trying to work with them to get the new attendance program in.

And so we're clear, the attendance program is this. If you don't come to work, the punishment is, guess what? You Just got to come to work for a longer period of time before. You take off again.

However, the alternative is we have to follow the contract of the UPW BU 1038,811 provision, which is if you don't come to work over a certain period of time, we have to fire you.

We had a nap program with UPW in place that the current Director, Kalani Warner, decided not to renew because he, I believe he let the vocal minority outrule the majority. And it hurts morale for those folks who keep getting stuck, who work in 16, 24 hours. This is, this affects morale.

And this is why we have a huge turnover in the young ACO ranks as opposed to those that have been. Around for a long time. So we're trying to work on those issues to deal with them. But to be honest with you, we need UPW's help.

And frankly, we may need to look at changing some portions of how, how staff are allowed to call in. I'll give you an example. Right now, ACOs, all state employees, for that matter, can take up to four days of sick leave without having to provide a doctor's note. Well, ACOs are considered first responders.

Why can't that be reduced to two days? I know that's not popular, but we have to do something to try to address the attendant because right now, I'll give you an example, at OCCC, they were spending $21,000 of overtime a week. Think about that. That's $7.75 million that we don't have.

So we had to institute strict protocols on overtime at that facility. But what that means, if people aren't showing up, we got to close post. If we close post, then we can't let the inmates have to do programming. They can't do programming when they come for parole. They don't get paroled because they haven't completed the programming.

So we're stuck in this catch 22 with the staff not showing up to work. But I want to make it clear working in correctional facilities is hard. It is not for everybody. If you see some of the conditions they have to work in, I can understand why some of them are disenchanted.

And so I would say, as the policy makers of the state need to take a hard look at the salaries for the different classes work we have. But also how do we improve the working conditions of those employees to make them want to come to work?

The reason why we have hard time filling some of our medical positions, ask yourself this. Would you rather work in a clinical Setting where it's less stressful, less dangerous and make the same amount or more money or go to a correctional setting where it's dangerous, you don't know what's going to happen and the conditions aren't ideal.

So if you don't have those numbers now about the fiscal impact of overtime and emergency staffing, if you could, we can share those with us.

It will be for last fiscal year. Because we do have that for sure. Thank you.

And you'll, you'll be shocked. Okay. Anything additional for the Director? If not, we can move on another question. Go ahead.

So to follow up on some lineup, as far as the cost of incarcerating in here versus on the main, some discussion in the past was that and I want to know if it's still true or not that the inmates that Sugaro takes are like cherry picked.

They don't have health issues, behavior issues, things like that. And so the cost of, you know, incarcerating them is lower versus we have to have the ones that, you know, may have psychological issues and health issues.

So the cost is higher because services. Is that still true to some degree. They try to cherry pick. But to be perfectly frank, what really drives the train is how long is a person sentenced? Because economically that makes more sense to us. Now the worst of the worst are in Arizona.

We have most of our 68 life without parole in Arizona. We only have three or four here in the state. The ones that are here are because they have serious health issues and new trials coming up. You have our serious gang bangers in Arizona.

You have those serving life with possibly a parole, those serving class 8, 20 year sentences. They're in Arizona.

Now they do try to cherry pick with respect to health care issues because there is in the contract, if I'm not mistaken, they would pay the first $2,000 of medical costs outside the facility and we would pick up the remaining costs.

But the bottom line is we still save because the longer term inmates are in Arizona and we provide the same programming. The only programming we do not have in Arizona we have here is sex offender treatment, which we're trying to do and work furlough.

And no state in this country would allow you to release any MA from another state in their state to do work furlough.

I think it'd be helpful for the Committee to have some kind of analysis as far as looking at apples to apples. Right. And you know, the cost of inefficient facility, obviously. Right. That's what we're dealing with. The cost of, you know, all These different things. Shortage of workers who retire. You have all these challenges.

But I think be helpful if we had something from you to do that analysis.

So we do have information on the amount of overtime by facility. We do have information on the staff.

Well, comparing it to like because you have, you have a clear number. You said 300 and 100. Right.

So what, what is. What's in there? Zero, so I see. I got it. We do not write every time. Okay. We do have that. That'd be helpful I think to have us understand that. Can I have one more second? So the second question is. Right.

You talked about at the beginning of your testimony that you have to build all these jails, these facilities statewide. Are you looking at other means of financing to build that? Well, we're looking at a P3 means of financing for the OCCC program. I know that we talked about P3s before.

There is federal money that the state is not able to access because normally jails are done by municipalities and municipalities have access to monies that we cannot get. Right.

And that's why, you know, so we, we created the subdivisions to try and create a mechanism so that we in rural areas we're unable to access that kind of money. Are you thinking about that for like Kauai, the Big Island and OCCC I think is too. You know it's city leg so it'd be difficult to do that.

But the neighbor islands, I think there's opportunities to go after money that is cheaper. Right. They can. The bonded we can float for them. We can amortize over a longer period of time. Right. And it is. It is cheaper than general. General obligation bonds.

We certainly talk to DAGs use the expending agency to see what other options are out there because we want to provide. This isn't new. So you.

You haven't been looking into what do you have? Well, no diagnostic explanation agency. You and I talked about this a year ago or more I think. Yeah. So at that time. I think I mentioned it today about. I think there were some type of entity being put together in moan. Right. Right.

It was an issue about water rights. If I'm not mistaken. So I. I don't give you. I don't know what came but I'll give you came to position. So I did mention those that DAGs but they would be expediency. So I'll go back and check with them. I thought the issue was.

I thought the money came from the. Core of engineers or something. I'm not sure. I don't know.

I have to go back. I'll check with them and I'll took. It back to the Chair.

It's funny that other municipalities get that we don't. It's not free money, it's just cheaper money. Right. And it's. Everybody's competing against general obligation bonds. So we have to start looking.

We have all these needs, so we have to start looking at other sources.

I don't disagree. I think the state, Hawaii is one. Of only six states in the nation. That have what's called a unified correctional system where the state runs, not where it's both the jails and prisons. And that makes us a little bit unique, but also makes it very taxing on the state.

This is a question about the operating settlement. So I don't know if it's something that maybe Deputy Director Moser should talk about, but it's a really.

Just a kind of a.

Deputy Director Moser or the Director.

I don't know. It might be both of you.

One of us will answer that. So. Last year, the Legislature passed a restrictive housing solitary confinement law that was going to be going into effect in advance later on. And there's very specific prohibitions around individuals who have serious mental illness.

And I know that the Opulento lawsuit really was addressing the care of people who are seriously mentally ill in our jails and prisons.

So in addition to the cost for the 35 additional positions, are there any other cost associated with any of the other things that the DCR has to do to come into compliance with the settlement that we need to be aware of as the Committee and, and really concerned about it?

Because, you know, this is intersecting with the restrictive housing working group. And we're looking at whether we have to delay implementation of the law. And so we need to understand the full cost of all of this and this population of the seriously mentally ill in the prisons.

This is the population that's rotating between prisons, state hospital and community. And I honestly, like, I'm at a loss to how to understand all of this because it crosses different jurisdictions. But this settlement is driving us, I think, to have a better system of healthcare within the prisons.

So can you speak to what are the additional costs that go beyond the 35 new positions that we might be having to Fund?

Sure. I think some additional costs for DCR and the state would be that if we're unable, for instance, the experts have identified 63 bail inmates at Halawa that we cannot provide the level of care that they need even with the 35 new physicians. And. But they don't reach the level of forensic care need that provided state hospital.

So we would be looking at, if we had to transfer those folks to. Mainland facilities, what that cost would be to get them the care that they need, the level of care they need consistently in a right direct.

We anticipated that at least 30 of them that we can identify from the 63, that if we move them we would need upwards to $9 million a year. We could beat the cost this year, but we would need money next year moving forward. In addition to that, some of the provisions of the new law not be.

Able to comply with because we simply don't have the facilities. We don't have the infrastructure to do it. I'll give you an example. We only have one male medium security facility. We only have one female prison in the state that's a women's community correctional center and a lava correctional facility for men.

The law as it's written is written for jurisdiction that has multiple prisons that they can transfer people between. We don't have that luxury. So if we can't meet their needs at Halawa for a male and the state, they don't reach the level of care for the state hospital and there's no community based option for them here.

We have no choice in order to meet their needs but to transfer to the mainland so that we can put them in the right environment to meet their needs.

One of the other things we may have to do is move additional inmates out of Halawa to the mainland so we can complain with the law, so we at least have the room to move people around to create these additional restrictive housing areas that the law calls for.

We provided an in depth presentation on October 13th, I believe, and we listed why we couldn't do those things in the law. Unfortunately for us, and I'll take the hit for that is during the last legislative session I provided our policies and all of our procedures during all of our testimony.

But no one bothered to read our policy or procedures, including the Oversight Commission. They admitted that they didn't and yet instilled the law got passed. And had they done that, we provided the working group with a comparison of NIC and ACA guidelines. And if the if someone had bothered to look at that, they would have sought it.

We had areas to work on, but by and large we were tracking with what the national standards were given the restrictions we have. So whatever we can do to comply with the law, we will, I want to make that clear.

But it will take moving inmates around, shuffling inmates around in order to do so, and it will take new housing units based on the different type of restrictive housing in the bill that we currently don't have.

Director, I want to push back a little because what I just heard you say is we didn't do our homework about reading the testimony and the policies and not understanding.

But I think, I think what's becoming clearer to me, right, and as I'm a partner in you and help to lead this Legislature in passing that solitary confinement restrictive housing law, I think what became clear and what is really only crystallizing for me is the lack of intermediate facilities. Right.

We either have full fledged jails and prisons or the state hospital. And it's for this group of seriously mentally ill. That's the group that we're struggling with and that's the group that I don't think this Legislature realizes.

Like you just said very clearly to me, what I heard now, which I was not hearing last session, was that there is this gap that could actually be and, and is fulfilled in other states by correctional facilities.

But we don't have that here. That's one of the challenges. That is correct. Okay, I'll give you an example. I mean, in other jurisdictions, you normally have the Department of Health run the behavioral health facilities within the prisons in the state. In this state, however, that's not happening.

I'd also like to stress that not everyone who is sentenced by the court to the custody and care of the Director of the Department of Health have to go to the state hospital. The Director, just as I have the authority to do, determines the appropriate place to put them.

And I make determinations to place people either in the mainland or this facility. I think that larger group would be talking about. You're correct. There has to be some type of community based option for them, whether it's a secure setting or not, that addresses that need. And right now that is a big gap.

The state is somewhere between 500 and 650 beds short of not forensic level, but therapeutic level beds that need structured living, case management and medication in the community. Not at the state hospital, not in the jails or prisons.

Thank you, Director. Thank you, Chair, for letting me indulge in this line of questioning. I'm really struggling with this in our area because I know that this is a huge area of concern in the prisons.

The increasing of the suicides that we've seen is a direct result of not having enough care.

But then when we see the cycling of seriously mentally ill people who are diagnosed with serious mental illness cannot be supposed to be kept in the prisons and then go to the hospital, but then we see them cycle back into the community. I'm really struggling with that.

And so I really appreciate this opportunity to understand where the costs are coming and what, what we have to fund, whether it's in the line of PSD or an additional funding that they might come forward with or what.

Maybe what's what we need to Fund for Department of Health and Community Based Services. Yeah, I think there has to be something in it. Not only do we need to do deflection up front, meaning first police contact before first appearance in court, but it has to also be diversion.

That diversion should be to community based settings that can provide the therapeutic environment they need.

I can tell you now, and I said this for years, a jail is the worst place to put someone with mental health issues because they're either going to be preyed upon or they're not going to get the right care they need because it's not a therapeutic environment. So it is the most costly, least effective.

And some people say, well, Tommy, what about jail restoration? There's no such thing as jail restoration because jail, jail is not the appropriate therapeutic, community therapeutic environment to place someone who has mental health issues to get them where they need to be so they can operate on their own out in the community.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Actually, I have a quick question. Sure. So I know that forecasting is difficult and not necessarily your job, but we have seen a downward trend, as you noted in your testimony, for a number of incarcerated, largely tracking with national trends.

Also, do you have a sense for whether you'd expect that to continue or level off?

We do have. I'm sorry, I'm used to the microphone. I'm leaning into one with the thermos. But we do have the number on the projections that we looked at for OCCC. We can provide that.

And what that does, that looks at the current laws, laws that are coming into effect down the line and considering population growth, and they do some kind of algorithm and figure out what the population could be. We have that for Kauai and we have FCCC.

So I can provide that to you, Chair, and you can take a look at it as an analysis and you can see how they came up with that numbers.

I think that'll give you significant. I think that'll be helpful.

You know, I think given the size of some of the CIP needs and requests, I think something we're struggling with, that we'll get into later with the DOE as an example is we're projecting a massive decline in enrollment so as you know, proposals come for new schools or expansion.

It's something we kind of have to factor even into our design elements. Like if we're going to actually build to the capacity that we currently need, what does that look like in 20 years, do we end up dramatically under capacity?

Which is a good problem to have, but with facilities that are largely inflexible and incapable of adjustments? I think that's a good point because I think when you look at building new facilities, you need to look at building, okay, what else can you use it for? Right. What else can it be retrofitted for down the line?

So I think that is a good idea because you did look at how then can you turn that over to the, to the community to use some other government entity to use?

Thank you. That would be helpful. One hand as a somewhat related follow up. And this is probably a question I'll pose to our judiciary also.

But I think anecdotally, but also in reality, our current sentencing is impacted by our capacity issues, at least for certain low level crimes where there may be the conversation in the community is this revolving door where guys are just kind of arrested and released and it is what it is, right?

We don't have the capacity to actually incorpor certain people in a lot of cases. Is there a concern that if we do end up scaling up with new facilities and actually expanding to what is needed, that it'll impact that sentencing?

I really can't say. But I can tell you now we don't have a facility we need today. The facility we have today didn't meet our needs 10 years ago and not meet our needs today. And I can meet our needs moving forward.

I think our facilities were built at a time over the years when it was direly needed. So it was rushed and put in without any thinking of, okay, what do we look like 10 years from now? And as you know, we don't have a master plan. The master plan was Last updated in 2003.

At that time, the master plan called for the replacement of OCCC. And so we asked for $10 million. For. The master plan. I think we got $250,000 of seed money. So I want to make it clear I know that corrections isn't sexy, but it is a necessary evil.

But if we nickel and dime the funding for corrections, then we're going to get what we always got, which is we're going to have facilities that don't meet our needs today or in the future. And we're just going to keep putting band aids on a problem that require replacement.

As a Director, I'm here to work with the Legislature and all the partners out there. If you have other ideas that you think can help us create a more effective and efficient system, I'm all for it because I want to reduce the cost to the taxpayer, but I also want to make sure the taxpayer is safe.

You're welcome.

Members, any additional questions.

Along the lines of what I was talking about as far as the money that could come from the feds? I think strategically we got to be smarter of how we go after this money. So my question is as you talk to DAGs about is there opportunities to go after federal money?

Like I said, I think it's cheaper money and it's not necessarily free money. But trying to remember but there there was grants but it had to be used specifically for planning purposes. Right. So it's money up front that they give you free. Right. Money. But to build it would be just cheaper financing.

So strategically, if we understood, you know, the globally how all this works, we plan how we finance and go after certain kinds of funds more strategically. Right now you're asking for plan and design money out of go bonds. Right. Whereas we could have gone after it through a grant process from the feds.

One is I'm not sure if that's still true. But as you're talking to DAG, these are some of the questions you should be asking.

We'll talk to budget and finance as well.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anything else?

Okay, we can proceed to the next. Well, I'm done with the testimony and so if you guys wanted to go with a table, Chair, whatever table you want to go, we could go through.

Otherwise, that's all I have. I'm okay.

Members, anything you want to add? Thank you very much.

Thank you for your time. I appreciate you to questions and we'll get the information to you.

Thank you.