When Governor Sarah Sanders asks Republican lawmakers to leap, their typical answer is, “How high?” This is one of the most noteworthy aspects of her first two years in office.
The Arkansas Legislative Council’s covert decision to withdraw a $57 million contract to design the 3,000-bed mega-prison she intends to construct in Franklin County is all the more startling because it clearly shows that she lacked the necessary votes to get it approved.
Additionally, she has witnessed Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R-Branch), one of her regular allies in the Legislature, denounce as extortion threats threats made to recalcitrant lawmakers to withhold funding for projects in their districts if they do not support the prison. This tactic is not uncommon, but it is rarely discussed aloud in such blunt terms.
The Joint Performance Review Committee of the Legislature has scheduled a hearing for September 9th, which will give lawmakers the opportunity to ask uncomfortable questions of administration officials regarding a project that is marked by political tone deafness, needless secrecy, and confusing choices. This is another indication that there may be trouble ahead for Sanders’ prison plans.
The most important of those queries is: How will you provide water to the prison?
Meager amounts of water were produced by test wells drilled in August at the proposed jail location north of Charleston. This might be disastrous for the project because officials in Fort Smith and Ozark stated they don’t have the capacity to supply the prison via pipeline.
Surprisingly, the state has suddenly come up almost empty after spending almost $3 million on the prison location without fully examining whether it could be supplied with water.
Sanders insisted that additional prison space is desperately needed to alleviate the backlog of state inmates in county jails, making the new prison the focal point of her criminal justice program. In a state that currently has more prisoners than all but two other states, her incarceration-forward strategy is likewise predicted to result in a 25% increase in the jail population over the course of the next ten years.
Ironically, even if her policy decisions are increasing the demand for prison space, her own people’s lack of diligence may require her to start over with a new prison site, delaying the prison’s online launch by a year or longer.
She might also have little to show for the political capital she has invested in getting this project approved, including winning over almost everyone in ruby red Franklin County, when she runs for reelection the next year.
The role of Joe Profiri, her hand-picked corrections secretary who was ousted by the Board of Corrections and thereafter retained as a senior adviser in the governor’s office with ill-defined responsibilities and a $184,000 salary, is also called into question by this fiasco.
Sanders’ choice of the Franklin County location, which is isolated, rural, without water or sewer capacity, has poor roads, and lacks a readily available local labor force, didn’t make sense when he surprised the locals last Halloween and has never been sufficiently explained.
Even though the property didn’t satisfy many of the desirable criteria set forth as the site selection process started, state officials were fascinated on it once they found out it was for sale in July 2024 and, working in secret, closed on it in less than a month.
These requirements included a location within two miles of an interstate or federal highway, a county population of at least 30,000 to ensure a sufficient workforce, and water and sewer facilities to accommodate a daily demand of 300,000 to 500,000 gallons.
The project’s detractors have long claimed that the prison is not viable at the selected site due to a lack of water, and the two test wells drilled on the land only produced 3,100 gallons per day.
Adam Watson, one of the founders of a grassroots effort to close the prison, stated that the facts haven’t changed since day one. He claims that the site’s problems were so clear-cut and unfixable that, in all honesty, we could have just sat on our hands and said nothing.
Given the site’s inherent shortcomings, Watson adds that the water supply is only the first of many challenges the project would encounter, saying, “I think we’re going to face similar issues every step of the way.”
The session was convened by the Joint Performance Review Committee, which has the authority to summon members, after the prison’s opponents submitted a petition with over 1,200 signatures requesting that members investigate the project. According to Watson, lawmakers have been urged by the prison’s opponents to bring both Profiri and Sanders to testify.
It remains to be seen how aggressively the committee will push. The panel includes some Sanders loyalists who have publicly backed the proposal, but none of the Republican lawmakers who have been loud in their opposition to the prison serve on it, despite the fact that they could testify. However, the hearing ought to at least compel administration representatives to address queries and concerns in a public setting, with Franklin County detractors present.
Whether to examine representatives of Vanir Construction Management, the California company that has received $400,000 of a $16.7 million contract to manage the project, will also be up to the committee.
Vanir has come under fire from Stubblefield and Sen. Bryan King (R-Green Forest) for their lack of transparency and collaboration. State auditors also rebuked the corporation for charging the state for expensive hotel stays, wine, and first-class flights.
Even Vanir’s higher predictions fell far short of the quantity of water the prison would require, yet he was compensated $50,000 to dig the test wells at the prison site and gave lawmakers water flow data that a state study disputed.
Watson says opponents of the prison are cautiously optimistic that the project won’t proceed as planned, despite the fact that they are prepared for the possibility that Sanders will try to persuade Ozark or Fort Smith to change their minds or advance plans for a smaller prison on the same site. This is due to the lack of water at the chosen site and the project’s price tag, which is almost certain to exceed $1 billion.
But prudence demands that any optimism be restrained by Sanders’s shown unwillingness to own up to her mistakes or alter course, and a Legislature still populated by Republicans who are content to say how high?
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