I'm going to call this meeting of the House Finance Committee of
the Corrections Subcommittee to Order at 902 on Tuesday, February 10th,
2026. I am going remind everybody to mute their cell phones.
I'll start with mine. Present today, our representatives,
Hymn Shoot, Meers, Hall, Holland,
And as we call them, Gene Nelson and myself, Representative Hannon, welcome everyone.
The purpose of the sub committee is to review and discuss the agency budget transactions
with the goal of forwarding recommendations to the full finance committee.
Before we begin, I'd like to introduce Hunter Meacham, who is my sub-committee aide in
your point of contact with my office if you have questions, concerns, follow up.
Kayla Tupoe, who is our LIO moderator today.
We will hear opening remarks from Commissioner Jen Winkleman, and
from Deputy Commissioner April Wilkerson, an Administrative Services Director Kevin
Warley, with a mid-year update on the FY26 budget.
With that, you will find these meeting materials in your binders towards the back under meeting
one.
Please come forward and their presentation is in you binder.
I will also note that they have a plethora of lifelines in the room if we go straight off topic or have follow-up.
Jeff Edwards, who's the Executive Director of the Board of Parole.
Zane Nightswinger, Who is the Director for Institutions.
Travis Welch, Whose the director of Health and Rehabilitation Services.
Dusty DeMott,
White Cough, Deputy Commissioner is online.
The others are in the room.
For those watching remotely, the PowerPoint presentation
can also be found under today's meeting documents on basis.
The content of the binder, including the FY26 subcommittee
book, can be on the legislative finance division's website.
So please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.
Hey, good morning chair co chairs and members of the committee for the record. My name is Jen Winkleman
I'm the commissioner for The Department of Corrections. I want to thank you for
the invitation to do this FY26 mid-year status
report as well as
It is my understanding that we will be doing a deeper dive into a department overview on Thursday with this same committee
I just wanted to start by saying that the department continues to focus on public
safety and improving outcomes for those that are in our care and custody all the
while as the rest of the state under significant fiscal pressure as many of
you have heard me say over and over again we are the tail at the end of
Cops, courts, and corrections.
We're kind of the catcher's mitt for individuals
that fall or slip through the system in other areas.
And that reality makes our work really expensive and really complicated.
I can't tell you how many times legislators, past and present members of this body have shared with me.
I used to have your budget when I was on that committee or in full finance.
It is very complicated, I think four or five years ago coming into this role,
in these chairs and I recognize the complexity of it.
The individuals we're dealing with with the financial pressures that I
recognize are going on throughout the state.
That being said, I want to thank the legislature for their efforts, for
their work in supporting the work we do.
I know it's complicated.
Last year we got a bill through the House, HP 35, through
the through legislature.
And that's exciting and in these times, I feel like those are those wins that I want to capitalize on, that those
are rehabilitation wins, those educational wins. Those are changing outcome wins so I
want thank you for that. I wanna thank the administration and the governor for his support of our department as well.
Most importantly, i wanna think my staff who despite this financial pressure and fiscal demands
and risk they face every day, they show up. They show to this environment where we are
are containing risk all day long in our work,
as well as the bigger picture.
So with that, I want to turn the actual presentation
over to Deputy Commissioner Wilkerson and Director Worley,
but I do want say thank you and we'll talk more later.
Good morning for the record.
My name is April Wilkerson.
I am one of two Deputy Commissioners within the department.
corrections. We do have our second deputy commissioner, Jake Wykoff, who should be online to answer
any other operational questions. I'm going to start on slide two.
Just a reminder that the mission of the department remains the same, there is a heavy commitment to ensuring the public safety and the welfare of not only the staff, but also those that are under our care and custody and that they're leaving us better than they they entered into the system.
The FY26 budget has 2,115 permanent full-time positions.
The department currently has a vacancy rate statewide of those positions of about 14.6%.
So, about just over 300 of our positions are currently vacant,
which is increasing our overall over time.
$490 million, so the $489.9 million of that we do have an increase over the 10-year period of our general funds.
Of about $167 million just in general fund, we have taken a deep dive look to see what is.
what is causing the growth in the overall budget and what we've identified is that about 30 percent
of that increase is specifically tied to salary adjustments in
the collective bargaining agreements and then another 45 percent is
specifically tie to legislative changes in our fiscal notes over the the last 10 years.
And with that, the next few slides, Director Woodley,
are going to go deeper into the major changes in the FY 26
budget.
Good morning, Kevin Worley. Admin Service Director for
Department of Corrections. So the the three slides that we're going
to take a look at are the budget increments that
we received for FY26.
So before you, is the Department-wide Supervisory Stand-by
This increment reflects contractual obligations under the APEA collective bargaining agreement
that grants supervisory employees stand by pay when those members are required
to be available outside their normal working hours.
So this is for items like emergencies for fire life and safety
or some of the building maintenance issues that we've been experiencing.
So, this reflects the 24-7-365 nature of correctional operations.
and then we fully expect to expend this for FY26.
On slide four is the peer support and wellness.
This is a program that we've had in place
within the department for a few years
and this is accounting and budgeting technical adjustment
for our operating appropriations.
So.
Again, not a new program, it's just merely accounting and budgeting, and it is within
our population management structure.
So this program is funded by an interagency receipts through reimbursable service agreements
or RSA's that we have with the other components within our department.
Representative Prox.
Yes, thank you through the chair.
Yeah, I guess so. Would this be a staff? Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you.
All right. On slide number five is the correctional or, excuse me, community residential or CRC
contract cost increase that resulted in a, we do have contracts with five different locations
within the state. And this is, the increment that was necessary to meet the contractual obligations.
RDEU or results delivery unit in our appropriations structure.
So those are the components that make up that difference.
And I'm going to turn to represent a St. Clair, but remind us before this increase last year,
how long, when would, has been the previous change in that contract price?
To the chair, this is April Wilkerson.
It depends on the contract we can get that to you with which ones
I do know that there were a couple contracts that didn't have an annual increase
And then there are others that had a built-in CPI increase on July 1st of each year
So we we get get break down to okay represent a Sinclair. Thank you, Madam chair through the chair
Looking at these
Contractual is it cheaper or I'm not
Cheepers not really the term I'm looking for less expensive to house them
Not put them in the CRCs
To have them stay in in confinement facilities then put him out in a CRC
Through the chair to representative St. Clair
We have renegotiated some of those contracts if the contracts are
previously under the tiered pricing it gave that appearance with the first few
beds being at $320 in the Fairbanks area versus the cost of the institution but
as you fill the beds up that per diem bed rate actually went down to where it
was I think it came down $25 a bed so it depends on how the contracts are
with all of our contracts except for the one in Juneau and the
one and Fairbanks. There are more of an administrative monthly
administrator. This is what it costs to keep the lights on
and then a per diem bed. As you fill the bets it's about $20
or $25 per bed again depending on the contract but we can get
that the breakout of those rates to you. If you could please. Yes. Thank you
As always, or is the norm, if you would give that information to my office,
then I'll make sure all members of the subcommittee have it.
Go ahead.
The next item, excuse me, the next items are reductions or decrements to our budget.
So on slide number six.
We did take a $6 million reduction on institutional personal services authorizations and this was
related to a letter of agreement that we had with ACOA regarding double overtime for correctional
officers. The correctional officers had to work their full shift before they were eligible for
If you want to think of this discussion is I do play-by-play and then these two are the color commentators
So they add on add into that
So the next item is the funding and closing of the housing unit at Spring Creek Correctional Center
And we actually had some intent language related to this so we'll address this particular
$7.5 million reduction as we go through intent languages. That's okay
on slide 8. So within the changes that we had last year, there were five permanent full-time
positions that were reduced out of our budget with a decrement for general fund of $372,000.
These positions were related to the inmate mail photocopying. And one of the things that
we've seen with the reduction of these particular positions, because they're very important to
One of the areas that we had concerned with receipts of drugs through the mail was right here and folks were
Scanning that mail photocopying that male and then making it available to the inmates
Without these positions, we still have to do mail distribution. We're still scanning for
Anything coming in through. The mail so these folks are now being replaced by CJTs or correctional officers that are
taking care of this particular function.
This particular item was dealing with the tablets that we have at Highland Mountain,
the inmate pilot tablet program. There's no funding impact on this
particular items. It's a program we started at the tail end of 24 and continued through 25.
contract was actually set to expire effective September 1st of last year since
that time the vendors continue to provide services and will continue
to provides services through the end of this fiscal year. So those pilot that
pilot project is continuing on through this through June.
Representative Prox.
Thank you. Yes through
the chair you say no funding impact but have you seen any.
from this program, have you seen any benefits
from it so far that we could talk about?
Through the chair to representative Prox,
if you don't mind, I would like to call on the director
or the deputy commissioner, Wyckoff,
that maybe they can speak to some of those,
the accomplishments that they've seen.
Okay, we'll start here in the room.
And then just if we want more.
For the records, a nice longer director of institutions for the