300 former state employees who lost their jobs when the state privatized the prison food system, may be getting their old jobs back.
But there’s a catch.
After more than two years of steady controversy including maggots in the prison food and workers having sex with prison inmates in the food cooler, the state’s experiment with privatizing the food delivery system has been scrapped.
Gov. Rick Snyder made the announcement in his budget presentation declaring it would be better if the state rehired 300 civil servants to do the work.
At the time the Republican senator who chairs the corrections budget declared he needed proof before he voted to scrub privatization.
This week Sen. John Proos agreed with the governor, but instead of paying the state employees what they were paid before, he argues they should be paid the lower wages given to the privatized workers.
“If we could afford it last year at x dollars, why should we afford it for 13 million more dollars?,” asked Sen. Proos. “It makes no sense to me why it should cost 13 million for taxpayers for a service last year the governor signed into law.”
The governor’s team has not signed off on the salary reduction but local Republican Senator Rick Jones opposes the pay reduction.
“You are probably going to have to pay more than what they’re now paying out. It didn’t work. We need to restore the system so we don’t have so many problems.”
There is also a disagreement between Senator Proos and Rep. David Pagel, who chairs the Corrections budget in the House.
“Should the new workers get a pay cut?”
Mr. Proos shows no signs of changing his mind.
“As far as I’m concerned, until I see different data, we need to fund the budget at last years level.”
Looks like the trio has some issues to resolve.
