
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 18, 1995                   TAG: 9511200023
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

REPORT: NEW PRISONS NOT NEEDED

Senate Democrats said a revised state prison population forecast that was released Friday proves they were correct to trim Gov. George Allen's request earlier this year for prison construction borrowing.

Democrats accused the Allen administration of withholding the figures for political reasons until after last week's General Assembly elections. The administration accused Democrats of failing to keep violent criminals off the streets, even though officials knew the state would have sufficient prison capacity soon, Democrats said.

"You mean I really didn't vote for the release of 8,700 violent, repeat offenders?" said state Sen. Joseph Gartlan Jr., D-Fairfax County.

The Senate Finance Committee heard a new prison population forecast Friday, nine days after a legislative election in which many Republicans assailed Democratic incumbents for their prison-building intransigence.

Carl Baker, deputy secretary of public safety, told the committee that in 1996 the state will have 1,740 fewer inmates than predicted last year. The gap between last year's projections and this year's increases to 3,538 inmates by 1998, then tapers off to 446 by 2003.

``The bottom line is we don't need to build all these new prisons,'' said Sen. Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton, the Finance Committee chairman who was defeated for re-election.

Baker said the administration probably will ask for funding for no more than one new adult prison. But Sen. Richard Holland, D-Windsor and chairman of the public safety subcommittee, said no new funding will be needed.

The committee also was told that education is shaping up as the most likely budget buster in the 1996 General Assembly session.

The public schools need $527 million more over the next biennium just to maintain current programs and accommodate enrollment growth, state Superintendent of Public Instruction William Bosher told the panel.

New initiatives ranging from alternative education to a new student testing program boosted the state Board of Education's budget request to nearly $700 million, and that figure does not include teacher raises.

by CNB