SACRAMENTO — The court-appointed overseer for healthcare in state prisons moved Wednesday to seize $8 billion from the California treasury, asking a federal judge to hold Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Controller John Chiang in contempt of court.
With the state mired in fiscal crisis, J. Clark Kelso, the federal receiver, asked U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to force officials to turn over the money he says he needs to raise healthcare in the state's prisons to constitutional standards after years of neglect.
Henderson, who appointed Kelso as part of an inmate lawsuit, has previously ordered the state to cooperate with the receiver.
Kelso also seeks $2 million in daily fines against the state for refusing to fund thousands of needed medical beds. He told reporters Wednesday that he went to court "with great reluctance and yet a sense of firm conviction."
"We have fully explored and exhausted every avenue for securing this funding in a manner that least affects California's budget and immediate cash needs," Kelso said. "But the state's leaders have failed to act."
Kelso previously requested $7 billion to build and renovate medical facilities, but the total has increased because he agreed to dental and mental health clinic upgrades to comply with court orders in separate legal cases.
"Is Clark Kelso out of his mind?" state Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater) said in a news release Wednesday mocking the receiver. "The idea of providing $8 billion for state-of-the-art healthcare for murderers like Charles Ng, Richard Allen Davis and Scott Peterson is sheer lunacy."
Kelso said Wednesday that his facilities would provide basic care; he said almost half the cost was related to guarding patients.
At a news conference and in his filing to the judge, Kelso detailed a series of unsuccessful efforts he had made this year to obtain the money from Schwarzenegger, Chiang and state lawmakers as they struggled with a $15.2-billion budget gap.
The federal courts have found the state incapable of fixing California's system of prison medical care, which is so flawed that dozens of inmates have died needlessly in recent years because of medical mistakes, a lack of access to treatment and other problems.
