Federal receiver J. Clark Kelso today rejected the state's resistance to turning over as much as $8 billion to improve prison system health care, accusing Attorney General Jerry Brown of misleading a federal judge about the state's ability to cough up the money and renewing his demand that state officals be held in contempt.
Brown, representing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Controller John Chiang, had told the court last week that forcing the payment would disrupt the state's already precarious finances. He made his plea a day after the Legislature failed to approve a bill that would have provided bond money to satisfy Kelso's demand.
"Filings by Defendants in other proceedings demonstrate that their cries of poverty were overblown and calculated to mislead," Kelso responded today. "The receiver has confirmed that $250 million in general fund money appropriated under AB 900 for CDCR infrastructure is, and at all times material to this matter,was unencumbered, but defendants never made it available to the receiver."
Kelso continued that "financial constraints may not be used to justify the creation or perpetuation of constitutional violations" and cited the Legislature's repeated failure to appropriation the funds. A hearing on the contempt motion is scheduled for Oct. 6 in San Francisco.
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