Prison labor

The state Division of Internal Audits suggests the Division of Forestry could save the taxpayers more than $600,000 if it used prison inmate labor on approved and pending construction projects, from nursery renovations to dispatch center repairs.

State Forester Pete Anderson recently accepted the audit recommendation, saying the agency has relied on inmates to provide construction help since the creation of the state conservation camps, where some minimum security inmates serve their sentences.

"It is important to note that camp crews are typically best used for demolition and clean-up projects and basic hand labor, not skilled construction trades," Mr. Anderson said in his written response.

For instance, use of inmate labor recently saved the state about $108,000 on a recent greenhouse renovation in Las Vegas, Mr. Anderson said.

But that wasn't good enough for Richard Daly of Sparks, who attended Tuesday's meeting of the Executive Branch Audit Committee in Carson City as a representative of Laborers' Union Local 169 Tuesday. Such projects require skilled labor and should not employ untrained labor, the union representative said.

Despite the fact the Public Works Board, which oversees most state construction projects, was contacted during the review to make sure the prison labor recommendation was appropriate, State Treasurer Kate Marshall (a member of the Audit Committee reviewing the proposal) immediately took up Mr. Daly's cause, asking whether using inmate labor on a large scale might not violate the state's "prevailing wage" law.

That law, modeled on a federal law initially enacted in the 1920s to prevent contractors from using lower-priced black labor on federal hospital projects in New York -- requires state agencies to pay a much higher wage, set with input from the labor unions, than actually prevails on private work sites within the state.

"I just want to make sure we are covered" against possible union lawsuits, Ms. Marshall said. "I would hate if an audit put an agency in the position of exposing them to some liability," she said.

Yeah. In the face of this modest proposal to save taxpayers a little dough by using prison labor for "site demolition and clean-up projects and basic hand labor, not skilled construction trades," lawsuits are surely the only concern of Ms. Marshall, whose election Web site at www.marshallfornevada.com declares "Kate Marshall is honored and proud to have the support of organized labor unions," listing more than two dozen union-related organizations.