SACRAMENTO, CALIF. (AP) - A federal judge on Tuesday denied Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s request to remove a court-appointed receiver who wants the cash-strapped state to spend $8 billion on new health care facilities at state prisons.
The administration immediately said it would appeal.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson rejected, among other things, the state’s claim that the receiver, J. Clark Kelso, is violating federal law by seeking the construction money. The state also had argued that Kelso was no longer needed because it can run its own prison medical system.
Henderson gave the receiver control of the system in 2006 after finding conditions in the state’s 33 adult prisons so bad that an average of an inmate a week was dying of neglect or malpractice. That hasn’t changed, he said in Tuesday’s ruling.
“The court is far from confident that (state officials) have the will, capacity, or leadership to provide constitutionally adequate medical care in the absence of a receivership,” Henderson said in his 24-page ruling in San Francisco.
Hours later, a second federal judge said he also had considered naming a receiver to take over the prison system’s mental health services, given evidence that “the state was incapable of doing its duty.”
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton repeatedly said he was trying to control his temper as he lectured state officials and attorneys in his Sacramento courtroom over their failure to meet his February deadline to come up with a plan to treat mentally ill prisoners.
Karlton called it “mind-boggling” that the state lacks a treatment plan 14 years after a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of mentally ill prisoners. The judge previously found that mental health care in state prisons is so poor that inmates frequently commit suicide.
On Tuesday, he gave administration officials 60 days to come up with a plan to improve care for thousands of mentally ill prisoners or face being held in contempt of court.
Officials said they failed to meet the February deadline partly because they were busy trying to unseat the receiver and block his construction plan. Half the 10,000 beds in Kelso’s $8 billion plan would go for mentally ill prisoners.
Karlton ordered the state to consider moving hundreds of prisoners to vacant beds at state-operated psychiatric hospitals as a stopgap measure.
Attorney General Jerry Brown, the administration’s lawyer, reiterated his objections to the receiver’s plans and said the state would appeal.
“The federal receivership has become its own autonomous government operating outside the normal checks and balances of state and federal law,” Brown said in a statement. “Already, California is spending almost $14,000 per inmate for health care, far more than any other state. It is time for a dose of fiscal common sense.”
Henderson rejected those arguments. He said there is oversight of the receiver’s plans and noted Kelso has offered to scale back his plans as necessary because of the state’s ongoing fiscal problems.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s office projects California faces an $8 billion deficit even after legislators approved a budget to close a $42 billion gap through June 2010.
Henderson promised to make sure Kelso’s plans don’t exceed what is needed to improve conditions to legally required levels, and to turn the system back to the state once he’s satisfied conditions have improved.
Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office that represents inmates in the case, said the best way to end the federal oversight is for state officials to cooperate with the receiver to improve medical care.
“I think (the ruling) shows that the attorney general’s position had no merit and it was more of a political gesture than a legal argument,” Specter said.
Kelso is seeking to hold Schwarzenegger in contempt of court for refusing to turn over a $250 million down payment to design up to seven medical and mental health centers for 10,000 inmates.
A decision on whether Kelso even has the power to order the state to spend money on prison construction is before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The state argues that the receiver is violating the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act.
Kelso said in a statement Tuesday that he has a renewed commitment to working with state officials to improve prison health care.
Meanwhile, a federal three-judge panel has tentatively ordered the state to cut its inmate population by about one-third to ease overcrowding, which could reduce the number of medical facilities needed. Both judges are members of that panel.
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