Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, asks a question during a Dec. 6, 2024 committee meeting about a prison planned for Franklin County. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)
The Arkansas Senate on Wednesday rejected for the second day in a row a $750 million appropriation bill to support construction of a new 3,000-bed prison in Franklin County.
Opposition to Senate Bill 354 grew Wednesday with three more senators – Republicans Alan Clark, Steve Crowell and Dan Sullivan – joining ten colleagues who voted against the legislation Tuesday.
Proponents of expanding prison capacity, including the governor, argue the new prison is necessary to address overcrowding in county jails. Officials last month set the preliminary cost estimate of the project at $825 million.
Local officials and residents were caught off guard last October when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the state’s $2.95 million purchase of 815 acres near Charleston for the project. Community members and elected officials have pushed back against the project for months.
Sen. Bryan King, a Green Forrest Republican who’s been a vocal opponent from the start, on Wednesday referenced costly prison projects in states like Utah, and said building a 3,000-bed penitentiary in the rural western Arkansas county would be fiscally irresponsible.
“These mega prisons are still mega-financial disasters,” he said. “The only winners are going to be the prison building companies out of state that’s going to take millions of our dollars.”
King also criticized the decision to not expand the state’s Calico Rock prison. Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson proposed expanding the facility by roughly 500 beds using surplus funds, and state lawmakers approved $75 million in reserve funds for the project in December 2022.
That was put on hold when Sanders threw her support behind the Protect Arkansas Act, a 2023 law that, among other things, removes the possibility of parole for the state’s most serious offenders. Inmates serving more of their sentences means more prison space will be needed, which Sen. Justin Boyd, R-Fort Smith, said needs to be addressed.
“In this chamber we voted to create new penalties for Arkansans… so we all want to say we’re tough on crime, but yet then we don’t want to provide the space,” Boyd said.
The Legislature set aside $330 million in 2023 to support the governor’s prison expansion efforts, but disputes between the executive branch and the Board of Corrections, and among state lawmakers, have delayed the project.
While the process may not have been perfect, state lawmakers need to find a way to fund this effort to protect constituents, Corning Republican Sen. Blake Johnson said.
“I appreciate everybody’s differences, but please let’s try to work together for the safety of Arkansas citizens,” he said.
Johnson was one of 18 senators who voted in favor of the measure Wednesday, one fewer than Tuesday. Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, voted for the measure Tuesday, but did not vote Wednesday. Sen. Ken Hammer, R-Benton, who did not vote Tuesday, cast an affirmative vote Wednesday. Sullivan supported the measure Tuesday, but voted against it Wednesday.
SB 354 has twice failed in the Senate because appropriation bills require 27 votes to advance out of the upper chamber. There is no restriction on how many times lawmakers can vote on an appropriation bill, but they only have until the end of the session to advance legislation to the governor for final approval. The General Assembly is expected to finish considering bills by April 16.
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