New bills hike prison costs, panel's frustration
Capitol Report for dailies for week of Feb. 25, 2007
By Jim Campbell
OPA Capitol News Bureau
The chairman of the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission sighed, reflecting on new 
estimates of legislative-driven increases in prison costs.
"I don't know what we're going to do," said Sen. Richard Lerblance, D-Hartshorne. 
"We're going deeper and deeper and deeper in the hole."
The commission, annually frustrated in its efforts to make successful recommendations 
for restraining Oklahoma's mounting prison expenditures, is now faced with legislation 
adding at least $1.58 million and possibly far more in 2008. 
That's only on the few bills analyzed so far. Research Director Christopher Hill said 78 
bills in the 2007 Legislature could have some effect, two of them possibly decreasing 
costs, but that a fiscal impact has not yet been determined for many of them. 
The maximum annual cost of just the bills analyzed is $266.8 million.
To cope with lack of space and the swelling prison population, the Department of 
Corrections (DOC) last month made an amended budget request of $619 million for 
2008, a $163 million increase from the 2007 appropriation. The DOC wants a 
supplemental appropriation of $47.2 million, or $5.7 million more than its July estimate.
Hill acknowledged that the methodology used by the Oklahoma Criminal Justice 
Research Center has been challenged by some legislators, who contend that the estimates 
do not reflect savings from taking criminals off the street and preventing their further 
crimes.
Lerblance filed legislation this year encompassing eight recommendations for savings 
that the commission approved in December, including another proposal on the governor's 
role in parole decisions. All died without a committee hearing.
Just that day in committee, he said, he asked a senator sponsoring a bill increasing a 
penalty to a felony if he would support a bond issue to build a prison to house the new 
felons. He said he would not, Lerblance said.
Commission recommendations regularly fall victim to lawmakers' fear of being branded 
"soft on crime."
One commission proposal this year would have established a tier system for sex 
offenders, providing a finer distinction between defendants based on a calculated risk of 
re-offending.
"Why should someone urinating by the side of the road be treated the same as someone 
molesting a child?" Lerblance asked at the commission meeting.
Sparks flew between two commission members following a presentation by Charles 
Adams, a Tulsa University law professor, on a national Model Penal Code.
Adams contended states would do better to let their sentences follow their budgets, rather 
than allow juries and courts to fill the prisons and leave it to lawmakers to pay for it.
District Attorney John Wampler of Altus disagreed, saying that was precisely why 
sentencing guidelines adopted by the Legislature in House Bill 11213 of 11 years ago 
have been ignored.
Public safety, which he said should be the No. 1 priority, was ignored in the discussions 
that led to adoption of the guidelines.  He said he was "offended but not surprised" that 
public safety was not mentioned in the professor's presentation.
Jed Wright, former senator from Tulsa who served on the working group that developed 
the guidelines, said "you're wrong when you said we did not take into consideration 
public safety."
"I'm offended by what you said," Wright said. "I was there."
Wampler replied that he was there, too, and public safety was talked about primarily by 
law enforcement officials but was not a priority of the lawmakers.
Adams said the model code recommends sentences should be based on the gravity of the 
offense, the effect on the victim and the blameworthiness of the defendant.
One of the key recommendations of the code, he said, was that every state should have a 
permanent sentencing commission "with authority to promulgate sentencing guidelines."
"We have a commission without authority to promulgate new guidelines," he said.
The commission modified its recommendation on the governor's role in parole this year 
to say his signature is not required "unless the district attorney or victim has filed a 
protest of the parole with the Parole Board." It was not heard in Senate Joint Resolution 
30.
HHH
Who'd publicly vote against marriage, particularly something that might improve 
Oklahoma's poor record of divorces? Just a few, it turned out, but two lawyers argued the 
remedy at hand would only enrich their colleagues in the bar.
Anyone opting for a "covenant marriage" under a bill passed 93-7 in the House could not 
use incompatibility as grounds for divorce.
Rep. Terry Harrison, D-McAlester, said with incompatibility removed someone would 
have to go through the expensive and publicly ugly process of proving such an offense as 
adultery.
"Make no mistake about it, lawyers across the state are going to bill a lot more money," 
he said.
But Harrison and Rep. Richard Morrisette, D-Oklahoma City, possibly because a 
negative vote might be used by an opponent as a "vote against families," voted for House 
Bill 1026 after debating against it.
Author John Wright, R-Broken Arrow, said marriage should be based on a profound 
decision after counseling, "not based on fickleness of feeling."
HHH