House appropriations panels add hundreds of millions for prisons, pay and staffing

House appropriations subcommittees advanced a package of funding increases for the Department of Corrections that would raise pay, add staff and fund contracts for medical and mental-health services, food operations and facilities work.

The public safety subcommittee approved the measures by voice vote after committee discussion. The subcommittee’s budget presentation said last year’s amended budget included an infusion of $345,000,000 for the department, and that the House FY26 proposal adds another $125,000,000 on top of the governor’s recommendation, with the presenter describing the FY26 package as a major step to address staffing ratios, occupancy and safety needs.

Substantive changes targeted pay compression, retention and frontline staff: the package includes multi-tiered cost-of-living adjustments and raises (examples discussed by the subcommittee included a 4% increase for certain support positions, a 4% increase for correctional officers generally, an 8% increase targeted at behavioral-health counselors and additional six-month-in-grade promotions and compression adjustments for supervisors). The proposal also adds 700 correctional-officer positions to improve staff-to-offender ratios (the presentation cited a current average around 14:1 and an improvement goal closer to 11:1).

The subcommittee discussion itemized contract and operational funding increases to reflect higher population and service costs: roughly $22.2 million additional for mental-health contracts and $20.4 million for physical-health contracts were listed, with separate increases for dental contracts and increased food and farm operations costs. The package includes funding to open or expand transition-center beds, utility-cost targeting for new openings and a direction to identify property sites for additional transition centers in the Albany and Savannah regions.

Private providers are also supported: the House proposal adds approximately $38,000,000 for private-prison and correctional-institution payments and includes specific funding to add beds at named private facilities and to raise per‑diem contractual rates to reflect consumer-price-index increases.

The subcommittee recorded a motion and voice vote to pass the public-safety appropriations recommendations and adjourned. The committee record did not include a roll-call tally in the transcript excerpts provided.

Ending

Committee materials and the floor bill summary will show line-by-line allocations and statutory references for any implementation steps. The subcommittee also directed follow-up work to identify property for additional transition centers and to annualize contract and staffing costs in the base budget.