Local legislators and town officials testified Monday in Augusta in support of L.D. 1447, a bill that, if approved, would allow for $165 million in bonds to be spent on renovations to the Maine Correctional Center on River Road in South Windham.

While the local officials supported the renovation bill during testimony in front of the Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety, they also expressed concern about the possibility that forensic patients could eventually be transferred from Riverview Psychiatric Facility in Augusta to Windham.

The legislators’ concerns are based on Gov. Paul LePage’s bill, L.D. 1577, that, if approved, would allow Riverview patients to be transferred to any facility in the correctional system that is retrofitted to provide the increased security and care such inmates require. The intensive mental health unit at the Maine State Prison in Warren is the only facility in the state that fits the bill’s standards.

Deborah Sanderson, a Republican representative from Chelsea and the bill’s co-sponsor, confirmed Wednesday that LePage’s bill is not specific to the Warren prison. She said if another facility were built or renovated that met the same standards as the unit in Warren, it would “allow the department to be more fluid” in how it handles forensic patients – defined as those who are not criminally responsible because of mental illness or are incompetent to stand trial.

Sanderson said the mental health unit at Warren “is not an incarceration setting. It’s a specific medical unit designed to address mental health needs.”

If approved, the renovations in Windham, which were initially set to cost $171 million but have been whittled to $165 million, would increase security and energy efficiency, while expanding the center’s capacity for housing inmates.

All three in Windham’s state delegation – Rep. Patrick Corey, a Republican, and Democrats Rep. Mark Bryant and Sen. Bill Diamond – have recently toured the correctional center in Windham. In his testimony Monday, Bryant said it is in “dire need of renovations.” Corey described the conditions of the facility as “shameful.” All three legislators cited the safety and security of the public and correctional center staff as a reason for supporting prison renovations.

Town Council Chairwoman Donna Chapman testified that she toured the prison recently with the Town Council and was “shocked and appalled at the conditions in there. The most basic necessities need to be met for care of prisoners and the safety of guards who work there everyday.”

Bryant said he supports upgrading the facility because the prison “had public hearings with people in the area and they showed us what they wanted to do. They made corrections based on public concerns and the plan was well vetted.”

The funding for the correctional center renovations would come from government facilities authority bonds, which, unlike ballot bonds, are not voted on by the general public. In his testimony Monday, Diamond said he had “significant concerns about excluding the voters from the decision-making process.”

On Feb. 8, Maine Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Fitzpatrick and the criminal justice committee will have a work session to further discuss the details of the plan for the correctional center. Diamond said they will look to further cut the costs of the project, and that more details regarding renovations at the center may be released after the meeting.

‘Riverview South?’

During his testimony, Diamond made it clear that he does not support a renovation that would allow “a much larger expansion that would support a Riverview South.”

Diamond said the bill to move patients from Riverview to the maximum-security prison in Warren “is for any facility that has that type of capability to deal with mental health patients.” Diamond said he is concerned that if a similar facility were built in Windham, Riverview patients would be transferred to the correctional center.

In his testimony, Corey said any plans for moving forensic patients to Windham “will need to be discussed at great length in the Legislature and in my community as this is a fairly serious change. Applying the brakes (on renovating the center) now is not fair to my constituents. Further expansion could be discussed at a later date.”

Bryant, Corey and Diamond also took a tour of Riverview while they were in Augusta on Monday to “get a sense of what a modern facility looks like, the challenges they face, who the patient populations who reside there are, and what kind of programming is in place for them,” Corey said.

Corey said he “will need to spend more time with L.D. 1577 to form an opinion because I have yet to read it or take a look at the testimony.”

Samantha Edwards, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the governor’s bill would move individuals from Riverview to Warren that the staff can’t handle, and would “definitely tackle one of the facility’s major concerns.”

In a press release issued Tuesday, Sen. Dawn Hill of York, assistant Democratic leader in the Senate, criticized the bill as “a backward approach to mental health that we cannot allow. These Maine people may be severely ill, but they are not criminals, and they shouldn’t be treated like them.”

Vacant cells in the Maine Correctional Center in Windham.State Rep. Mark Bryant said in testimony before the Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee that the Maine Correctional Center in South Windham, shown here, is “in dire need of renovations.”