TONOPAH, NEV. — Diane Perchetti couldn't pull off the Easter celebration alone. Her to-do list was too lengthy: stack chairs, mop floors and haul out the decorative jail cell from the recent Muckers Ball fundraiser.
She phoned Bob Bottom, who oversees the local minimum-security prison camp. As usual, he sent over the inmates.
In this former boomtown forgotten by much of the state, the small prison is a savior for residents and the cash-strapped town manager. Supervised inmates shovel snowed-in driveways, yank out weeds, clean rain gutters, slash brush and dig graves.
"They do everything but herd cattle," said Perchetti, 63, who runs the Tonopah Convention Center. "Shoot, they fixed my plumbing a few times."
So when state officials proposed mothballing the camp to help narrow Nevada's $3-billion budget gap, residents prepared for battle. They repeatedly car-pooled to the capital -- a 460-mile round trip. To lawmakers and their staff, they handed out save-the-camp pleas written by senior citizens, high school principals, the Salvation Army, students.
If Tonopah, population 2,600, prevails, it will have accomplished something notable in this recession: staving off government cuts with little more than scrappiness.
In recent months, a number of revenue-deficient states, including New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey, have considered closing prisons. Kansas and Michigan have already locked up lockups, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Even communities that once balked at housing prisons are fighting for the jobs and cheap labor they provide. Across the nation, prisoners fix tractors, mow lawns and fish scrap metal from landfills. Their towns -- often remote and economically forlorn -- have staged letter-writing campaigns and rallies on their behalf.
Nevada is saddled with the nation's largest budget gap by percentage, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Some of the budget cuts proposed by Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons target the Nevada Department of Corrections.
The 150-inmate Tonopah camp needs less than $2 million a year, some of which the state Division of Forestry provides. But sitting more than 200 miles from both Las Vegas and Reno, the camp has struggled to hire and retain staff, said Suzanne Pardee, a corrections department spokeswoman.
