The state body in charge of funding new prisons meets today to discuss the financial path forward for the proposed facility in Escambia County.
That prison was one of two 4,000-bed sites outlined in 2021 legislation, but construction stalled when expenses at the new Elmore County prison ballooned to more than $1 billion and ate most of the available funding.
Lawmakers this year were able to divert some 2025 General Fund and supplemental spending bill funds to the Escambia project, but officials earlier this year said more money is needed before dirt moves at the site.
The Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority includes the governor, the Alabama director of finance and the Legislature’s two General Fund chairmen, Rep. Rex Reynolds, R-Hazel Green, and Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Range. The Escambia prison will be in Albritton’s district and he’s been the loudest advocate and fund finder for the project.
“I doubt the governor or the other members of the ACIFA would have called this meeting unless we have a path forward on making this work,” Albritton told IAP. “I think we’re going to have a methodology to make this work. We have quite a bit of money in hand at this point, I think we have enough to start moving forward.”
Albritton had previously said borrowing additional funds could be an option for the second prison. The state has already borrowed about $500 million for the new prisons.
Albritton said some of today’s discussion will focus not only on how, but who.
“The question may be who is going to construct it — this is such a specialized project, there are few companies that actually can do it,” he said.
The agenda for today’s meeting includes resolutions approving the transfer of real property for the Escambia prison and approving the “procurement and administration of design and construction contracts related to the Escambia Men’s Prison Facility…”
In mid-October, the ADOC told IAP the state was engaged in “negotiations for a design-services agreement for the Escambia prison. After a design contract for the Escambia facility is secured, the state will assess all options to best deliver the project under current market conditions.”
Citing security reasons, the department said it couldn’t provide a copy of the RFQ.
The new Elmore prison is expected to be completed in May 2026. The two modern prisons were outlined in a construction package approved by lawmakers and Ivey in 2021. The U.S. Department of Justice has an ongoing lawsuit with the state over the violent conditions in the crowded existing prisons. And public pressure, including recent meetings in which the families of inmates recounted gruesome details about abuse in prisons, is mounting.
Still, advocates have argued the new facilities won’t greatly lessen prison crowding. The prison population is growing and several dilapidated sites are set to close once Elmore and Escambia open.
Lawmakers and Ivey in 2021 dedicated $1.2 billion to two prisons in Elmore and Escambia counties. The Elmore site is under construction and was originally expected to cost less than $700 million. That’s increased to more than $1 billion because of inflation and an increased scope to include education and mental health services, ADOC says.
There’s no publicly reported price tag on the Escambia prison, but it is expected to cost less than Elmore because it won’t have specialized medical facilities.
The 2021 legislation gave the state the option to bypass the traditional bid process and have a design-build contract, where a single entity performs both the design and construction under a single agreement. That’s what was selected for Elmore County. In the more standard design-bid-build, designers and contractors are hired separately.