Exclusive: Council says Ozmint interfered in survey plans
Legislative audit panel says state prisons chief informed employees study was ‘one-sided’ effort
The state’s prison chief has interfered with an investigation prompted by allegations of lax security, inmate abuse and a politicized, hostile work environment, according to documents obtained by The State.
Letters sent to the state Department of Corrections by the Legislative Audit Council accuse Corrections director John Ozmint of tainting a planned survey of prison system employees.
In a newsletter and e-mail sent to Corrections employees in mid-June, Ozmint criticized the Audit Council’s plan for a survey of prison system employees, calling it a “one-sided” attempt to blame administrators for the prison system’s woes.
Subsequently, the Audit Council scrapped its plan to survey prison system employees, saying Ozmint’s comments had rendered any results invalid.
The state prison system has been underscrutiny since last summer. That was when a state Senate panel began looking into allegations that included:
• Covering up the sexual assault of an employee
• Using inmate labor and prison equipment for hunting and fishing trips
• The number of legal judgments against the agency, including a $600,000 award in an inmate-beating case
Ozmint has denied any improprieties. However, the Senate decided to hand over the investigation to the Legislative Audit Council, the investigative arm of the General Assembly.
Lawmakers say the Audit Council’s report is crucial to answering questions about how the prison system operates and spends its budget.
But Ozmint says that polling prison system employees would not address the agency’s largest problem: a lack of money.
“It is easy and tempting to blame your immediate superiors, your senior leadership or this agency for low pay, low staffing, crowded prisons and insufficient equipment,” Ozmint wrote in a June 17 e-mail to prison system employees, telling them about the upcoming Audit Council survey. “However, all of those problems are controlled by lawmakers.
“If you choose to answer the survey,” the e-mail concludes, “do so honestly.”
Ozmint’s e-mail to prison staff and similar language in an employee newsletter prompted Legislative Audit Council director George Schroeder to cancel plans for the employee survey in a June 25 letter to Ozmint.
According to federal auditing standards, Schroeder wrote, “audit organizations must be free from external impairments to independence.” Those impairments, according to the auditing standards, could be “actual or perceived” pressures from management or employees.
Schroeder declined to discuss the letters that he and Ozmint exchanged. But, he said, the agency’s audit of the prison system continues.
CALL FOR OPENNESS
Lawmakers say the prison system needs to be more open about its operations.
State Rep. Rex Rice, R-Pickens, said he had not seen the letters between Corrections and the Audit Council. But, he added, the Audit Council has proved itself thorough and impartial.
“They need to cooperate with the Audit Council,” said Rice, R-Pickens, one of the legislators who oversees the Audit Council. “It’s a problem, yes.”
Ozmint said he thinks the Audit Council knew its proposed survey of prison system employees was flawed. Prisons are different from other workplaces, he said.
For example, asking prison guards if they feel safe at work surely will elicit different responses than from employees of the Department of Social Services, Ozmint argues.
Ozmint also contends the Audit Council’s inquiry just is distracting attention from the prison system’s financial woes.
South Carolina spends about $10,000 less per inmate than neighboring North Carolina or Georgia, Ozmint says.
Both Ozmint and Gov. Mark Sanford, Ozmint’s boss, blame the prison system’s deficit this year on chronic underfunding by the Legislature.
That underfunding has forced his agency to leave new prison dorms empty because it cannot pay for staff, Ozmint says. In another instance of inadequate staffing, he says a recent escape from a Broad River prison occurred about 100 yards from an unmanned guard post.
“Everybody knew that Corrections had some incredibly essential needs that were not met” in the state’s budget, Ozmint said.
But some legislators say they don’t know enough about the prison system’s operations to know if more money is needed.
State Sen. Hugh Leatherman, the Florence Republican who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he and many other committee members “have no idea what’s going on at the Department of Corrections.”
“Do they need more money? Are they using the money wisely?” Leatherman asked rhetorically. “I’ve got to know what that means.”
ARE THEY ASKING FOR ENOUGH?
Some lawmakers say politics has played a role in the prison system’s deficit. They say that Gov. Sanford’s desire to limit state spending has prevented the prison system from asking the Legislature for the money it needs.
State Rep. Annette Young, the Dorchester Republican who heads the House corrections budget subcommittee, said Ozmint has been limited by Sanford.
“He’d (Ozmint) really ask for more, but because he was under the governor’s administration, he can’t,” Young said.
The prison system asked for a $21 million increase in its budget this year, then hiked that amount to $55 million, citing a backlog of expenses. The agency has a total budget of about $336 million.
However, Young said it was “irresponsible” for the agency to raise its request, knowing the state was facing a tight budget.
Ozmint lays the blame at lawmakers’ feet.
In past years, lawmakers have not fully funded the agency’s highest priorities, such as operating money for prisons. Instead lawmakers have spent on items the agency considers lower-priority, according to its budget request.
Also, a portion of the Corrections budget has gone to what’s known as “pass-through” items, money included in the prison system’s budget but earmarked to pay for something outside its responsibility.
Another part of the problem, Ozmint said, is there is little political support for more money for inmate medical care and food. Instead, the Legislature budgets money for more prison guards, money the prison system then has to use for food or medicine.
Ozmint said he would work with the Legislative Audit Council but more scrutiny is needed of the General Assembly and state budget.
“Let’s stop playing games with the funding,” Ozmint said. “Giving money for officers was just a ruse so we could pay the power bill.
“This was a survey to cast blame. If they’re going to cast blame, cast blame in all directions where there is responsibility.”
The State Newspaper
By John O’Connor
Aug. 10, 2008
