Rick Scott wants to expand inmate food growing program

Prisoners in Florida are hardly living high on the hog, but one way Republican Gov. Rick Scott promised to reduce government spending was trimming the fat from their food costs.

Here is what Scott said about cutting prison costs on his campaign website in 2010: "Paying competitive market-based salaries for corrections' staff, utilizing inmate labor to grow prison food and competitively bidding health care contracts, prisoner costs would be reduced by $1 billion." We will focus on steps he has taken toward using inmate labor to grow prison food.

In Scott's first proposed budget released Feb. 7, 2011, under programmatic efficiencies on Page 7, he listed about a $5.3 million savings in inmate food.

First, some background about the state's prison food program that we pulled from an Oct. 4, 2010, Truth-O-Meter item about the nation's third-largest state prison system with more than 100,000 inmates:

"Another way Scott wants to save money is by having inmates grow their own food. But having inmates in charge of their own meals may only provide minor cost savings. The agency fired two private food service vendors two years ago and now cooks all prison meals in-house to save money. The daily food cost per inmate in August 2010 was $2.30. The Department of Corrections also already grows its own food. Inmates harvested over 4.7 million pounds of produce last year, including broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupe and watermelon. The crops supplement inmate meals, but cannot sustain inmates because of unpredictable weather and the large inmate population, officials said."

DOC spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger told us in an e-mail Feb. 8 that the daily food cost includes food, labor and cleaning products. Thirty-six prison facilities have inmates working in the edible crops program. Plessinger sent us a list of the food grown in that program in 2009-10.

Plessinger said that although Scott is cutting $5.3 million in overall prison food costs, he is also giving the department an additional $2.5 million to expand the edible crops program -- both within the first year of his budget. Scott's plan to trim food costs is mentioned briefly here in materials prepared for a Feb. 10 meeting of a Senate committee that oversees prisons.

Dan Ronay, the new chief of staff at the corrections department, told us that the $5.3 million cut will be achieved through "better management of our food service delivery." That will include working with the vendor to reduce costs, security improvements to reduce inmates eating while working on the food line and making cheaper choices -- for example, possibly substituting juice with fruit punch.

"We are still going to deliver good meals to inmates with the caloric intake required," Ronay said, while "trying to be a little more diligent in our food delivery system."

The $2.5 million to expand the edible crops program will allow the department to purchase better equipment and irrigation systems. Adding the $2.5 million in increased costs to the reduction of $5.3 million translates to a savings of about $2.8 million in the first year, Ronay said. But that one-time $2.5 million investment that will allow inmates to grow more fruits and vegetables translates to savings in future years as well, he said.

A House budget subcommittee that oversees the prison system heard information about prison food costs during a Feb. 9 meeting. The chairman of the committee, Rep. Rich Glorioso, R-Plant City, said that one other possibility raised during the meeting by Bonnie Rogers, criminal justice policy coordinator in Scott's office, was moving to brunch on weekends rather than serving three meals a day.

Scott promised to use "inmate labor to grow prison food" as one way to reduce prison costs by $1 billion. He has proposed cutting $5.3 million in inmate food while giving the corrections department $2.5 million to expand the edible crops program. We'll have to see how the state Legislature handles his budget proposal this spring. For now, we rate this promise In the Works.