Senate Rejects Cuts To Prison

The Canon City Record
In the last hours of this year’s legislative session Wednesday, the Colorado Senate allowed a bill to cut prison funding to die. House Bill 1421, with an amendment from Sen. Ken Kester, would have mandated that the Department of Corrections reduce overall prison bed capacity by 300 or create comparable savings. The reduction could have been accomplished by either: closing a state run prison; reducing public and private prison beds; or through other means identified by the department.
The House rejected Kester’s amendment, leaving the original bill that would have required the department to decommission a prison of at least 500 beds.
After the House’s rejection of the amendment, the Senate did not take the bill up again, effectively killing it as the session closed for the year.
“We were neutral,” DOC spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said. “We were going to do what they told us to do.”