Corrections Director wants budget money put back to normal level

The Iowa Board of Corrections approved an operating budget request today for the next fiscal year that asks for nearly 265-million dollars. Corrections Department Director, Kip Kautzky, says the budget would restore deep cuts to the system.He says it would work out to a nine-point-four percent increase, and help restore the department to full staff. Kautzky says the system is 273 people below the authorized staff level. Kautzky says the money for those positions is being used to offset furloughs and the funding for salary increases that the department didn’t get from the legislature. Kautzky says the ways things have been going, it’s been like “opening school and sending home the teachers.”He says they just want the money it takes to handle the prisoners in the system. Kautzky says Iowa is 44th in the country for what it spends on its corrections system. He says cuts in funding have set up a and endless circle for prisoners in need of rehabilitation.He says the cuts have left them without enough money to fund drug and sex offender treatment that’s been order by the parole board. Kautzky says without the mandate treatment, the prisoners remain in prison, and continue costing more money. Kautzky says they prison population has gone from 76-hundred in 2001 to 81-hundred now, while the budget has been cut instead of increased.