Reed introduces workhouse closure bills amid lingering discord over lack of budget vote – STLtoday.com

ST. LOUIS — Aldermanic President Lewis Reed on Thursday introduced previously announced legislation to eventually close the city workhouse amid lingering discord among aldermen over failure to allow a board vote on the issue earlier this week.

Reed’s new measures would require corrections officials to submit a plan to shut down the Hall Street jail, formally known as the St. Louis Medium Security Institution, within five months after the bills take effect.

The bills also would require officials to determine the feasibility of shifting workhouse prisoners to the city’s newer main jail downtown and the cost of contracting to house some of them in jails in other locales.

Reed also is calling for a new Division of Recidivism Reduction in the health department to help workhouse detainees with mental illness problems to ease their reentry into society.

Newly hired social workers would be assigned to that effort, funded by some of the $7.6 million allocated for the workhouse in the city budget for the fiscal year that began Wednesday.

Some other money freed up by the closure would go to anti-poverty efforts in areas disproportionately affected by violent crime.

Activists pushing for years to close the facility and their aldermanic allies had backed an amendment to the proposed budget introduced last Friday to delete all workhouse funding.

The measure generated lengthy debate that day, but a vote wasn’t held when the overall budget’s floor handler — Joe Vollmer, D-10th Ward — put the bill aside to get advice on legal issues.

When the board returned for an unusual Monday meeting, Vollmer never brought up the $1.16 billion spending measure. Instead, about six hours of the seven-hour meeting was devoted to an airport privatization measure sponsored by Reed.

That allowed the budget as submitted by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment and the workhouse funding to take effect without aldermanic approval. About two hours after the Monday meeting, Reed announced his workhouse closure legislation.

Vollmer said in an interview that he didn’t bring up the budget bill Monday because had it been amended, it couldn’t have been passed anyway by the Tuesday deadline set by the city charter.

He cited a board rule requiring amended bills to lay over for at least three days. Reed, the budget sponsor, at Thursday’s meeting gave a similar explanation.

In a tweet this week, the Close the Workhouse campaign said Reed’s measure reflects ideas raised by the campaign in a report earlier this year.

The campaign also tweeted that it has proposed to aldermen some amendments to Reed’s measures.One would require the new health division to also aid detainees whose contact with the criminal legal system resulted from substance abuse, poverty and other social determinants of crime.Mark Schlinkmann • 314-340-8265 @markschlinkmann on Twitter mschlinkmann@post-dispatch.com