Audit tackles lingering questions about project

State Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, pushed for the audit. He has said the state may be better off mothballing the prison because it will cost more to run than the state now spends on housing inmates at a private prison Outside. The $181,000 audit is being done by an accounting firm, John P. Johns CPA.

Stedman said the state shouldn't be getting itself into big, expensive projects without understanding them.

Does he want to shutter the prison before it opens, to save money?

"That decision is going to be made by the Legislature and the governor," Stedman said.

Another key legislator, Sen. Johnny Ellis, D-Anchorage, heads the panel that oversees the Department of Corrections budget. He said Goose Creek is needed but he understands why Stedman wants to better understand the finances.

"There's no danger that the prison isn't going to open," Ellis said. The Democrat is pushing for reforms including more mental health care and substance abuse treatment, both in prisons and in the community, so that the state doesn't have to keep building expensive prisons.

Goose Creek was built and financed by the Mat-Su Borough, which will lease it to the state.

The Senate Finance Committee requested the audit to examine why the prison was built in such a remote part of the borough, how much weight the borough gave to the costs of building a water and wastewater utility in an area that had none, and whether the project complies with financial limits set by legislators back in 2004.

Leslie Houston, director of administrative services for the Corrections Department, said the department is providing the information needed.

The prison cost $163,700 per bed, the department says. While that is above the $135,000 per bed set by legislators, once inflation is factored in, the department says, the allowed cost rises to $164,500.

Houston said the department is pleased with its new prison and is concerned the facility may not even be put to use.

"I wish we were able to be proud of it instead of defending it," she said.

Reach Lisa Demer at ldemer@adn.com or 257-4390.