Prison officials reply to union criticisms about LORCI in Grafton

Ohio's prisons bureau has replied to criticisms by one of its employee unions following a visit by state officials Lorain Correctional Institution in Grafton earlier this month. Service Employees International Union District 1199, which represents health care workers at LORCI, criticized the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in anticipation of a planned visit by Gov. Mike DeWine to the prison on Sept. 2. The event was a ribbon-cutting for the first dedicated medication-assisted treatment at an Ohio prison. Inmates with addictions can now get methadone or buprenorphine treatment in the secure prison infirmary thanks to a partnership between the ODRC, the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and Community Medical Services. DeWine did not appear at the ribbon-cutting, and neither his office nor the ODRC announced in advance that he would. The governor "was never scheduled or confirmed to personally attend the event," ODRC spokeswoman JoEllen Smith wrote in an email to The Chronicle in response to a request for comment on the union's allegations. The only state officials announced for the event were ODRC Director Annette Chambers-Smith and Ohio MHAS Director Lori Criss. Other specific union claims were baseless or wrong, Smith wrote: • The union claimed Chambers-Smith and the ODRC spent time and money paving a parking lot, on landscaping and flowers "to create a façade that fails to represent true working conditions and mandatory overtime many workers are forced to endure." "Because Lorain Correctional is a state facility, we must ensure that visitors and staff can safely get into and out of the facility," Smith wrote. "We must also take reasonable care to ensure that the grounds are maintained. None of the major improvements were done for the ribbon cutting. In fact, these improvements were in the works well before the idea to host a public event took place." Discussions about paving the parking lot began in 2021 and LORCI Warden Jennifer Gillece Black announced plans for landscaping and groundskeeping work in April, Smith wrote. Work began in June, continued in July, and the ODRC and Ohio MHAS began talking about a ribbon-cutting event in August, Smith wrote. The funding for the two-year MAT treatment contract, a total of $2.8 million, was through an earmark in Ohio MHAS' budget "which provides money for substance use treatment programs," Smith wrote, and "cannot be spent on any other type of expense unrelated to substance use treatment." • The union claimed ODRC employees are understaffed and more than 32 percent of mental health and medical department positions were vacant as of Aug. 17. LORCI "like prisons and private sector health care settings across the county, has experienced staffing challenges," Smith wrote. But the vacancy rate in medical nursing staff was 20 percent in civil servant and contract registered nursing positions and licensed practical nursing positions as of Sept. 7, not 32.4 percent as the union claimed, she wrote. • The union said ODRC should be paying to recruit and retain employees and provide them emergency pay they earned during the COVID-19 pandemic as declared by DeWine. Smith wrote that the emergency pay "is a contract dispute which we decline to debate in the media," Smith wrote, adding that arbitrators "have twice ruled in the state's favor on the issue of emergency pay." Starting in April 2020, through summer 2021 and again in winter 2021, the state paid prison employees hazard pay "to acknowledge the additional hazards that employees in these institutional settings encountered due to" the pandemic, Smith wrote. A $50 per overtime shift "teamwork incentive" was offered in 2021 on top of overtime pay for corrections officers and a new pay structure was announced by Chambers-Smith and union leaders in April, Smith wrote. Corrections officers who left state employment but want to return will be hired back at the same pay step, she wrote. The ODRC also has been recruiting more prison health care workers. The Chronicle-Telegram wrote a story about that recruitment drive on Aug. 31. Prison officials are using career fairs, community events, working with local schools and colleges to recruit more employees, and billboard, social media and radio ads are being used in recruiting, Smith wrote. And while double shifts "are sometimes necessary," Smith wrote that union and prison leadership were figuring out new scheduling options including four 10-hour per day shifts for registered nurses. Prison officials also started offering food and lodging for employees who worked double shifts during the pandemic, Smith wrote — "an option still available today." Though the union claimed monkeypox was a threat to inmates and employees, "none of our facilities have had an outbreak of monkeypox spreading among inmates or staff," Smith wrote. The prisons have "zero tolerance" for violence, despite a union claim that staff are facing "increased inmate violence," Smith wrote. New security cameras recently were installed and a new guard post were established for safety, she wrote.