SC prison riot highlights state's hiring crisis, lawmakers say

One in four jobs for guards is vacant at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, where one of the nation's deadliest prison riots broke out last weekend.

Why?

The state of South Carolina does not pay prison guards enough, critics say, and with the unemployment rate so low, it is almost impossible to fill the positions, which can be dangerous.

But vacancies don't just afflict the state's prison system.

Roughly 6,706 full-time state jobs are vacant, the state Administration Department reports.

Leaving jobs vacant has had dire results in recent years:

• Children have died while under the supervision of the state Department of Social Services, where caseworkers faced low pay and crushing workloads that made filling vacancies difficult.
• South Carolinians have died when dams broke after state inspections were, at one point, all but ended, because of staffing cuts.
• The state's rural roads are among the nation's deadliest, lacking basic safety features. Only now, after the passage of a higher gas tax in 2017, is the state's road agency starting to fix those roads.

Several other state agencies are struggling to fill vacancies, too, in part because they do not have enough money to pay wages that are competitive with the private sector, local governments and Southeastern states. And most state workers will not get pay raises in the state budget that starts July 1.

Democrats say the state must find ways to bring in more revenue to give pay raises to state workers.

"You can either pay to fill those guard positions or pay the lawsuits of the seven people that died," said S.C. House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, referring to the seven inmates who died in the Lee County prison riot.

However, Republicans who control S.C. politics — from the S.C. House to the state Senate to the Governor's Mansion — say every problem can't be solved with more money.

"Regardless of what the issue is, we can't get into the mindset that money is going to fix everything," said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield. "You're never going to be able to pay people in state government what they're making in the private sector. Everybody understands that.

"But it doesn't seem to be reasonable to go five years without any type of salary adjustment," he added.

'We're doing better'

Staffing shortages at the state's prisons can leave guards vulnerable to attack and cause correctional officers to work longer hours in already difficult jobs, experts told The State / newspaper.

Of the prison system's roughly 1,000 full-time vacancies, 627 are for correctional officers.

At Lee Correctional — where seven inmates died and 22 were injured in an overnight brawl that started last Sunday — 52 correctional jobs are open.

When Bryan Stirling was tapped by then-Gov. Nikki Haley in 2013 to lead the embattled Corrections Department, he noted correctional officers had not had a pay raise in almost a decade.

In 2014, starting pay for a guard at a maximum-security prison was $27,897. Now, after repeated requests, lawmakers have added money to the prison system's budget for pay raises. New guards at the state's maximum-security prison now start at $34,596.

"With the raises and consolidation, and, frankly with overtime, we're doing better," Stirling said Wednesday, noting that with overtime, some corrections officers make almost $42,000.

But that is still not enough to attract enough officers to fill the prison system's vacancies, Stirling said.

"We know it's not going to turn around overnight," Stirling said. "It will take a while for us to get back (to full staff)."

This year, Stirling is leaning on the Legislature to pay for more raises for guards. The House's budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes $3.7 million more for corrections officers — about $750 apiece. The Senate's version of the budget adds $5 million, bumping that raise to $1,000 apiece, the amount the prison system requested.

“If you want quality supervision of someone, whether it’s quality supervision in a day care center, quality supervision in a school environment, you’ve got to pay people for it,” said Donald Leach, an expert in corrections management.

Putting Band-Aids on state government

The state's prison system is not alone in its chronic under staffing.

But chronically underfunding state agencies can have severe consequences, critics say.

In the wake of the Great Recession, South Carolina's general fund spending fell to $5.1 billion in 2010-11 from $6.6 billion in 2007-08. The Legislature cut thousands of state jobs as tax revenues fell, forcing many state workers to absorb even more duties at agencies.

State agencies, grasping for dollars, became dependent on overloading employees, cutting costs in some areas and increasing fees in others:

• A legislative audit in 2014 — sparked by the deaths of children in the care of the Department of Social Services — found caseworkers at that agency were carrying caseloads more than twice the nationally recommended amount. Officials said the agency could not hire enough workers because pay was too low, and some workers were quitting because of heavy caseloads. Four years later, the agency remains understaffed.
• State roads — particularly in rural areas, some of the deadliest in the nation — crumbled, lacking needed safety features. In 2017, however, the General Assembly adopted a gas tax hike — two cents a year for six years — to start fixing those roads.

• In- and out-of-state tuition at S.C. colleges and universities has spiked. College officials blame the increases on cuts to higher education funding from the state since the Great Recession.

• Now, state agencies and public schools face a hiring crisis as more than 6,000 state workers and teachers prepare to retire this year with the end of a popular retirement program.

The state's general fund revenues have recovered to prerecession levels — surpassing $8 billion for this year. But much of that money has been soaked up by rising health care and retirement costs, budget writers say.

State agencies, too, have received more money to address issues exposed after tragedies.

This year, for example, both the S.C. House and Senate budget proposals add roughly $20 million to hire more caseworkers for Social Services.

But stagnant pay increases since the recession have done little to keep state workers' pay in line with their peers in the private sector, local governments and other Southeastern states, a 2016 study found. That study found state workers are underpaid by 15 percent to 18 percent, compared to their peers.

"It's a bit more than that we're (the S.C. Legislature) stuck in Great Recession times," said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter of Orangeburg, the ranking Democrat on the S.C. House's budget-writing committee. "We prioritize tax relief and welfare for business to come here, but we don't place that same premium on the welfare of our state employees and their families."

The 'reactionary' state of South Carolina

Too often the S.C. Legislature is "reactionary," reacting to the crisis of the day, lawmakers say.

The Legislature yanks out the state's wallet only when holes in government are exposed, Rep. Cobb-Hunter said.

"It's on both sides of the aisle," she said. "Too often ... we have a knee-jerk reaction to things. Whatever gets headlines is what we focus on and where we put our money. If it doesn't get the attention of the media, then we don't really see it."

This year, for instance, pay raises for state workers — nearly 40,000 of whom earn $50,000 or less — did not get as much attention from legislators as other proposals, including banning the state's nonexistent sanctuary cities, she said.

In his executive budget, Gov. Henry McMaster proposed spending about $7.2 million to give raises to some state workers — most law enforcement and corrections officers.

The work state employees do is "invaluable," the Governor's Office said.

But spokesman Brian Symmes added that the governor "is in the position of having to prioritize spending and pay raises in a way that will best serve every person in the state."

Some say, however, the state is in the verge of a catastrophic failure unless it reorders its priorities.

"If you change your car's oil the way you're supposed to change it, you help avoid your car breaking down," said state Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg. "When you don't change the oil, you kill the engine.

"We have refused to change our state's oil, and we have some engine components that are going out of service."

Help Wanted

Some S.C. lawmakers say it is time to focus to staffing shortages in state agencies after seven inmates died and 22 others were injured during a prison riot at Lee Correctional Institution. A look at how staffing issues are affecting the state Corrections Department:

• 627 vacancies for correctional officers, down from 764 a year ago
• 52 open jobs for guards at Lee Correctional, down from 90 a year ago
• New guards at maximum-security prisons earn $34,596, up from $27,897 in 2014

This story was originally published April 21, 2018 at 5:00 AM with the headline "SC prison riot highlights state's hiring crisis, lawmakers say."