Sen Robert Cowles announces he won't seek re-election in the newly redrawn 2nd District
The staffing issues at state prisons are getting a lot of attention after an audit but a Republican lawmaker also wants to take a long look at health care costs.
Senator Rob Cowles of Allouez says corrections officials need to put together more information. He says if people aren’t keeping good data on how the money is spent, that’s a problem. He says they’re asking for a report by January 15th, 2020 on how they plan to control costs.
Cowles believes there’s an opportunity to save money and it’s important to do that because the prison population is aging. An audit also found that overtime hours for state prison guards are up by more than 50 percent over a four-year period. Turnover numbers rose to 26 percent and vacancy rates doubled to 14 percent.
