Missteps threaten future of entire inmate work program at Ohio governor’s residence

Missteps put Ohio inmate work program in jeopardy

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A decades-old Ohio program that allows low-risk inmates to work at the governor’s official residence is in jeopardy after yet another disclosure of abuses, this time drinking by two inmates who are suspected of sampling the mansion’s private stock.

The discovery came just days after the state Senate denied confirmation of Gov. Ted Stickland’s nominee for public safety chief. She was found to have called off a planned January sting at the mansion aimed at a suspected cigarette smuggling operation in which inmate workers would pick up contraband dropped at the property’s edge and move it into prison.

Strickland has ordered a review of the program, which he suspended upon Thursday’s discovery of drinking, and “there is a possibility the program could end,” spokeswoman Amanda Wurst told The Associated Press on Friday.

Other states also allow low-risk inmates to work at their official governor’s residences; some of those programs have also been touched by scandal, including illicit parties and sexual escapades, but survived. Whether Ohio’s ends depends on the results of the review by the prisons department, which is expected to last into the summer.

A previous state report found that the safety official, Cathy Collins-Taylor, called off the operation to spare the governor embarrassment as he entertained John Glenn, the astronaut and former U.S. senator, at the home the night of the planned sting. Collins-Taylor calls the finding biased and denies it.

The reports of drinking at the residence served to amplify the attention given to the flap and its potential effects on the Democratic governor’s bid for re-election this fall against Republican former Congressman John Kasich.

A prison worker picking up four inmates at the end of their shift at the governor’s residence Thursday noticed inmate Nicholas Hoaja acting strangely and contacted authorities when they arrived at the Pickaway Correctional Institution.

Hoaja had a blood-alcohol level of 0.27 percent and had to be treated at a hospital, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said. The other inmate, Dallas Feazell, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.053 percent.

Strickland said Friday he believes Hoaja might have been drinking to sabotage his chances for release. The governor told reporters that Hoaja had left a note for the facilities manager suggesting he knew what he was doing and that the inmate didn’t appear to have thought about consequences for the entire program.

“Maybe he thought he was going to be released soon and had a fear of actually leaving prison and facing the outside world,” Strickland said.

Both the prisons system and the patrol are investigating how the inmates got the alcohol, but the assumption was they found it at the residence, where some alcohol such as beer and wine is kept in unsecured refrigerators. Those refrigerators are supposed to be off limits to inmates.

“We have no reason to believe they would have been able to get it anywhere else than the residence,” Walburn said. “We’re incredibly disappointed that it happened.”

Hoaja, 32, is serving a 3 1/2-year sentence out of Champaign County in western Ohio for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Feazell, 47, is serving a three-year sentence out of Clinton County in southwest Ohio for illegal manufacturing of drugs. Any new charges would depend on results of an investigation by the State Highway Patrol.

The nearly 50-year-old inmate-worker program allows low-risk inmates nearing release to perform tasks such as tending gardens, handling minor maintenance and staffing state dinners. Hoaja had worked as a cook and on a landscape crew since August 2009, Feazell on the landscape crew since March 2009.

Governors in Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and South Dakota have similar inmate work programs at their official governor’s residence. Some of those programs have survived scandals in the past.

Some North Carolina inmates do landscaping and gardening outside the governor’s residence, while others — including women — do housekeeping indoors and work as waiters. The program is at least 40 years old with no plans to change.

“It provides the inmates with meaningful work they can do as opposed to sitting idle in prison,” North Carolina prisons spokesman Keith Acree said Friday.

Then-South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow’s skirting of rules was blamed for allowing two female inmates to hold a clandestine party at his state residence in 2000. Janklow won his bid for Congress that year.

In South Carolina, then-Gov. Jim Hodges fired his prisons director in 2001 after guards allowed inmates working at his official residence to have sex in the basement. Hodges lost his re-election bid the following year to Mark Sanford — who shared Kasich’s credential as a former congressman.

Inmates in Alabama, Arizona and Florida, among others, also do maintenance and groundwork in and around state office buildings.

A University of Cincinnati Poll of likely voters released Friday shows Strickland about even with Kasich, at 49 percent to 44 percent. Pollsters talked to 668 likely voters between May 11 and May 20, and the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Chet Brokaw in Pierre, S.D.; Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, La.; Bill Kaczor in Tallahassee, Fla.; Jim Davenport and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; Phil Rawls in Montgomery, Ala.; Gary Robertson in Raleigh, N.C.; Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.; and Christopher Wills in Springfield, Ill.

(This version CORRECTS that Feazell’s blood alcohol level was tested at 0.053 percent, not 0.53 percent.)