Despite being bottled up in the House Rules Committee, Rep. Merrill Nelson, R-Grantsville, claims his prison relocation bill has been an effective tool in shaping prison relocation discussion.
Nelson’s bill, House Bill 262, requires the PRC to evaluate the current Utah State Prison site in Draper using the same criteria it is using to judge new sites considered by the committee.
“While the bill is waiting for a public hearing, I have been able to use the bill as leverage in discussions with House leadership about the location of the prison,” Nelson said.
The bill has been in the House Rules committee since Nelson introduced the bill on Feb. 6.
House procedures send all bills to the rules committee after their introduction in the House. The rules committee then assigns bills to a House committee for hearings and public review.
“House leadership has made it clear to me that their position is that the prison needs to be moved not only to fund the construction of a new modern prison, but also to fund a major overhaul of the state’s entire correctional system,” Nelson said.
House leadership, including Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, wants to revamp the state’s correctional system. This includes programming at the prison, rehabilitation efforts, sentencing, and probation and parole programs. The effort is to keep the public safe while reducing the number of people incarcerated and the level of recidivism after people are released, according to Nelson.
A consultant’s report prepared for the PRC estimated that local and state revenues associated with developing the current prison site, once the prison is relocated, to be $94.6 million annually.
The commission estimated that over the course of 25 years, the economic development of the former prison site could put $20 billion into the Utah economy and create 40,000 jobs.
“No legislator has his finger in the pie here,” Nelson said. “The state needs the revenue from the development of the prison site to pay for correctional reforms, including the cost of a new prison.”
Nelson, along with other legislators that represent Tooele County, have been working to get a 900-acre piece of property on Sheep Lane directly east of Miller Motorsports Park, and owned by Miller Family Real Estate, removed from the PRC list of priority sites for the new prison.
“We met with the staff and consultants of the PRC and shared with them the resolutions passed by Grantsville City, Tooele City, the school district, and the Council of Governments,” said Rep. Doug Sagers, R-Tooele. “We also reviewed information about sites in Tooele County that we feel the consultants missed in their initial review of the properties.”
Tooele County completed an economic impact study of the Miller site. The study found that once developed, without the state prison, the site has the potential to add $6 million in revenue to taxing entities in the county.
“That’s a significant amount of tax revenue for government budgets in Tooele County,” said Randy Sant, an economic development consultant for Tooele City and Tooele County.
At a meeting in December, the PRC selected the 900-acre parcel across from the Miller Motorsports Park, along with a 3,000-acre site near I-80 and 7200 West, and 600-acres in Eagle Mountain as its top three sites for possible relocation of the state prison.
The PRC accepted additional site proposals until Jan. 31, 2015. While the PRC has not officially released a list of additional sites, the owner of a large piece of property between the old Chemical Lime Company plant and the Walmart Distribution Center in Grantsville is reported to have offered his property to the PRC.
Local legislators, county and municipal officials are waiting for a PRC meeting scheduled for Friday at 1 p.m. in room 210 of the Senate office building on the state Capitol grounds. A summary overview of the additional potential sites will be presented. The commission will also discuss future evaluation steps of all potential sites, according to the commission’s published agenda.
This will be the first meeting of the PRC since they named their top three sites.