UPDATE March 31, 2014: SUCCESS! Thanks to the overwhelming outpouring of calls, emails, and support the $900,000 handout was taken out of the budget when the Arizona Senate met today. Thank you all for your help in making an important dent in the contracts awarded to private for-profit prison companies!
Tell Senate Appropriations Chair to pull $900,000 appropriation for GEO Group in state budget!
The budget deal negotiated Thursday in the state House included an EXTRA $900,000 specifically earmarked for facilities run by one private prison corporation: GEO Group.
This money was not requested by the Department of Corrections. The Arizona Republic reported that a lobbyist for GEO Group went directly to Rep. John Kavanagh, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee to make the request.
The corporation essentially circumvented both the contract negotiation process AND the state agency budgeting process.
Despite a contentious process in which a group of holdout Republicans were fighting to secure needed funds for the states broken child welfare system, Kavanagh handed this corporation $1 million that the Department of Corrections says it doesn’t need.
How many needy Arizona families will go without child care? How many CPS cases will go un-investigated because John Kavanagh cares more about the interests of GEO Group than about the people of Arizona? Read the Arizona Republic story here
YOU CAN STOP THIS
The Senate hears the bill this Monday, March 31.
Call the Senate Appropriations Chair Don Shooter and Senate President Andy Biggs and tell them to pull the plug on Kavanagh’s $1 million GEO Group giveaway.
Sen. Don Shooter: (602) 926-4139; dshooter@azleg.gov
Senate President Andy Biggs: (602) 926-4371; abiggs@azleg.gov
Send emails this weekend, but please call first thing Monday morning.
*Please CC cisaacs@afsc.org on any emails you send and forward any responses you get (even automatic ones) so we have an idea of how much impact this action has had. Thanks!
Categories: Urgent Action Alerts
In Arizona we don’t spend money on public education anymore. Our per pupil expenditures are the lowest in the entire country thanks to republicans like Kavanagh. Instead, we build private prisons to make money. It is sad that we no longer celebrate our diversity. Instead, Kavanagh tell us that diversity is to be stamped out by republican legislation. Fodder for the prisons. There is something really wrong when we elect outsiders like Kavanagh and allow him to do this to the people here. He does not respect the people here and he dishonors our traditions. He is not one of us nor is he welcome here.