Golden opportunities
The economic benefit of the Airway Heights prison is considerable. Staff salaries and contracts for goods and services pump millions into local pockets each year.

By Karen Dorn Steele
The Spokesman-Review

The prison at Airway Heights has spurred a six-year building boom that is changing the face of the small town. Among those moving in are prison employees who bought new homes in Hayden Meadows.

He's a salesman for Pupo's Produce, which contracted with the state to help feed the 2,043 men in Airway Heights Corrections Center.

"They are buying up to $3,000 worth of produce a week. It's a pretty good chunk of change,” Gilmore says.

The Airway Heights prison ranks among Pupo's top three clients in Eastern Washington, bringing the Spokane company $1.61 million a year.

The financial windfall generated by a major prison is well-documented, even if the negative impacts on communities aren't.

In community talks around Spokane, Airway Heights Superintendent Kay Walter brings her economic stimulus sheet: an annual operating budget of $38.6 million a year, with 75 percent of that going to staff salaries and benefits; millions spent each year on goods and services; and a construction budget that topped $113 million.

"The economic impact of a prison is by far its largest benefit,” Walter says.

About 40 businesses fill 275 orders a month for everything from Coke and Pepsi in the visitors room to dentures, diabetic shoes, buffalo meat for a Native American inmate feast, and trauma counseling for correctional officers.

Local companies earn $4.5 million a year providing products alone to the prison, paid for by state taxpayers.

Some of the needs are basic: toothpaste, toiletries, snacks and candy at the inmate store, where prisoners spend nearly $100,000 a month from their personal accounts.

The prison's 590 correctional officers, administrators, secretaries and other staff pay local taxes, buy or rent homes, and purchase an array of local goods and services.

In the city of Airway Heights, the official population has doubled since 1993, because prisoners are counted as residents. Developers are painting the West Plains with subdivisions to meet the growing demand for homes.

Twice a week, a Pupo's truck delivers fruits and vegetables for the inmates. Business has been so good that the company plans to bid this summer on a similar produce contract at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

Pupo's parent company, Charlie's Produce of Seattle, just locked up the contract for all the prisons on the West Side, the general manager of the Spokane firm says.

"For us, prisons have brought business and jobs,” Nick Pupo says. "It's been a really good thing.”

More people, more money

The prison has been a huge economic boon to the city of Airway Heights.

The town courted the big prison and, in return, got $1.1 million in impact fees from state taxpayers. The money was spent on better roads, a community center, a new courtroom, playground equipment and a fire truck.

The city also gets $101,295 a year from the state to provide fire protection and emergency services for the prison, and $307,000 a year for water and sewer services.

Airway Heights collected $600,000 in sales taxes from contractors who built the minimum-security work camp and medium-security prison on West Sprague.

Next, the city got an added bonus: a doubling of its population. The prison inmates are considered Airway Heights residents, so the official population went from 1,900 to 4,139 in the last five years.

That makes Airway Heights the third largest city in the county after Spokane and Cheney.

This year, Washington state will send the city about $140,000 for its share of state tax revenues. The figure is based on population and sales tax collections.

Five years ago, before the prison was expanded, Airway Heights got only $2,126 back from the state revenue pie, according to the state treasurer.

Additional sewer and water service brought in for the prison has helped drive a housing boom. Developers built 160 houses in the Hayden Meadows subdivision with plans for another 300 homes and townhouses over the next four years.

Other cities and agencies also benefit from the prison.

Local towns, colleges and other state institutions get a good deal from Airway Heights convict work crews, who are paid $1 an hour for their labor.

They build basketball structures for Hoopfest, trim Spokane's parks, clean the kitchen and grounds at Eastern State Hospital, pick up litter at Eastern Washington University, lay water lines for the city of Wilbur and set up the basketball floor at WSU's Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum in Pullman.

"It's been more and more difficult to get students to cut classes to work here during the day," Beasley Coliseum Director Jim Crow says. "Airway Heights has been a great solution to that problem."

Phoning home

Telephone companies also profit substantially from prison.

The Airway Heights prison funnels all calls through AT&T and US West. Inmates can place only collect calls, which run up to 40 cents per minute. Families and friends pay the tab.

In the past fiscal year, Airway Heights inmates made $1.8 million in phone calls, state records show.

Special security measures, including taping inmate calls and barring conference calls to deter scams being run out of prison, make prison pay phones more expensive, says Jim Brandt, inmate product manager for US West.

Some 40 percent of local call revenues and 45 percent of long-distance charges go back to the prison bureaucracy. Much of it is used for "inmate betterment," a fund that pays for recreation and other prisoner needs.

The rebate from AT&T was so high last fall -- $417,063 -- that it will help pay for a prison chapel, says prison spokesman Cly Evans. Last December alone, inmates spent $458,581 calling home for Christmas.

The phone profits are so high that an upstart Florida company, Tele-Con Inc., is now competing, offering inmates' families cheaper phone rates.

Television is another money-making opportunity behind bars. The prison pays Correctional Cable TV of Tyler, Texas, $21,000 a year for cable service.

Porn channels aren't allowed. Inmates get family TV, sports, movies and an all-Spanish channel. Taxpayers provide TV sets in the prison day rooms, but an inmate pays if he wants a TV for his cell.

Greenacres chaplain Jaime Cordona, a bilingual Lutheran minister, gets $16.48 an hour to visit the prison's Hispanic inmates for up to 20 hours a month.

Spokane attorney Donald Miller is paid $6,250 a month to teach inmates how to use the law library and discuss their civil rights claims.

"He doesn't defend them, but he advises them. He's pretty busy around here," says Evans, the prison spokesman.

Prison staff also have special needs.

Mental health therapist Patricia Kowal is paid $75 an hour to work with staff suffering from the stress of prison work. She has a $30,000-a-year cap on her services, according to her contract.

Kowal's services haven't been used much so far, but she's treated some correctional officers suffering from long-term stress.

Many of the prison's biggest contracts are for inmates' physical and health services. They include:

"I do diets for diabetics, for people who've had bypass surgery, and for people with strokes who are unable to chew and swallow. We get the high-risk medical cases for the Department of Corrections," she says.

The Hospice of Spokane has cared for two dying inmates with AIDS, spokeswoman Isabelle Green says.

"They contacted us a few years ago when they were opening a new infirmary wing. At that time, they realized the AIDS epidemic might be a big issue," Green says.

Riessen's Orthotic & Prosthetic Services, in business here since 1927, makes artificial arms and legs for inmate amputees, and special shoes and insoles for diabetics.

"With diabetic shoes, you are trying to protect their feet so they don't end up with an amputation," says Riessen's Henry Bennett. He goes to Airway Heights about once every two weeks.

Riessen's prison contract is only about 1 percent of the company's total business.

"It's really a small amount. These special shoes and other devices really aren't that expensive. But in our business, you have to be local, because everything is custom-made," Bennett says.

The prison also keeps orders flowing to Spokane's R.E. Anderson Dental Lab, which makes partials and dentures. "They keep us pretty busy. We handle the entire state," says owner Greg Anderson.

Spokane oral surgeon Thomas DeVleming visits the prison one day a month to work with the staff of three dentists. He operates on about 150 inmates a year.

"I go out there and I move teeth. When they get someone who needs surgery, they call me up," DeVleming says. "The patients are grateful to anyone who's nice to them."

Money stays in the community

Area colleges and consultants get their share of the prison contracts, too.

The Spokane community colleges have a $1.37 million annual contract to educate inmates, many of whom are illiterate or high school dropouts when they come to prison.

The education and vocational skills programs serve half the inmates in Airway Heights, says education director Vern Nelson. "We want inmates to make educational progress. By the time they get out, about 80 percent have completed a high school equivalency degree.

The Washington State Employment Security Department has a $336,504 annual contract for a transitional employment program for inmates leaving prison.

The Job Resource Center, a private Spokane consulting firm, got $85,032 this year to help ex-prisoners with stress and anger management and victim awareness.

With a $108,763 state contract, the Spokane Homebuilders Association also trains inmates in carpentry skills.

"This is all money that stays in the community," Superintendent Walter says. "There's no 'not in my back yard' sentiment about this prison."

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