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Saturday, August 29, 1998
California Senate
OKs guard raises
despite complaints
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO -- The Senate approved a 12 percent pay-and-benefits increase for California's prison guards Friday, despite complaints that their union had hobbled investigations of inmate abuse allegations.
The upper house, by a 27-2 vote, sent the Assembly a bill ratifying an increase negotiated by the Wilson administration and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
The pact has come under fire for a couple of reasons: the union's role in investigations of allegations that some guards abused prisoners at Corcoran State Prison and the fact that Gov. Pete Wilson recently vetoed a 9 percent pay raise for all rank-and-file state employees.
The union has been a major Wilson supporter, spending $1.5 million on his political campaigns in the last 10 years.
The Republican governor's aides have denied that any link exists between those contributions and the pay raise.
Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, said he disagreed with Wilson's failure to support pay raises for other state workers, but he said prison guards shouldn't be penalized because of it.
"I don't believe it's right for us to say because somebody did not get X we should deny Y and Z to another group," he said.
"I have expressed to the governor my unhappiness that they did not bargain in good faith with other (employee unions)," he added.
But Sens. Quentin Kopp, I-San Francisco, Ruben Ayala, D-Rancho Cucamonga, and Tom Hayden, D-Los Angeles, protested that approving the raises now would appear to condone the union's conduct at Corcoran.
"If they see they can sit through those hearings and that publicity and there is no effect on this package, it will be a sign that nobody is really serious about reforming the prison system," said Kopp, referring to hearings the Senate held on the Corcoran allegations.
Ayala said the union "did everything to obstruct" the investigations.
"Now is not the time to reward the performance of this organization," Hayden added. "The CCPOA better get its act together."
Corcoran Prison, located 170 miles north of Los Angeles, is one of California's two highest-security prisons and has housed such notorious inmates as Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan.
Eight Corcoran officers were indicted in April on federal charges of deliberately staging gladiator-style fights between inmates, one of whom was shot to death by a guard during a 1994 fight.
There also have been allegations that as punishment Corcoran guards put inmates into a cell with a 6-foot-3, 230-pound inmate who raped them.
Earlier this week, at the request of the peace officers union, a San Francisco judge issued a temporary restraining order barring investigators from investigating allegations that guards set up the inmate rapes.
The union asked for the order after state agents interviewed more than 20 prison officers but barred union representatives or attorneys from sitting in on the questioning.
And earlier this month a state investigator testified that an internal investigation of conditions at Corcoran was stymied after officials with the union met with top Wilson administration officials.
Department officials say no such meeting took place.
Burton defended the union, saying it was protecting the rights given guards under state law.
Sen. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, said all guards should not be denied a raise because of the action of a few officers at Corcoran.
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