Tony Smith has dedicated his life to the upkeep of prisons.
Currently serving as the maintenance manager at Foothills Correctional, Smith has spent a lifetime working for the State Department of Correction.
A bill in the North Carolina General Assembly threatens his future, Smith said, and the jobs of hundreds of maintenance workers around the state.
The Republican state legislature is considering a law that would put Smith and dozens of other DOC employees out of work, replacing the current workers with private contractors.
More than 50 people joined Smith and State Employee Association of North Carolina leaders on Saturday in a “Take Pride in North Carolina” rally at Judges Riverside Restaurant. The event highlighted the workers service to the state and challenged the government to find ways to cut without targeting state employees.
Employees don’t yet know where the legislature will cut as Republican leaders delayed releasing their budget and have kept mum on which programs they want to eliminate.
Rumors persist that the North Carolina School for the Deaf could face elimination, according to Ardis Watkins, SEANC director of legislative affairs.
Legislators considered consolidating the school with the eastern deaf school and the school for the blind, Watkins said. The plan would eliminate the Morganton campus and move all three to eastern North Carolina.
That plan was defeated in earlier years, she said, but could resurface with a more receptive legislature.
Other departments are facing deep cuts as Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue has proposed slashing 10,000 positions, which would send 3,000 state workers to the unemployment line.
Smith says DOC workers aren’t waiting for the budget to protest because the legislature will look at contracting out the maintenance of prisons.
The state already toyed with privatizing prisons, he said, with disastrous consequences.
The abortive move happened more than a decade ago, and the contractors refused to perform tasks not in their contract at the two prisons that piloted the program.
Smith was once called out to one of the prisons at 8 p.m. to repair an electric fence at a prison because the contractors refused to come out.
Allowing the state to privatize maintenance would imperil prison operations, according to Smith.
“(The inmates) will riot if things are not kept intact,” he said.
Smith is not alone in his frustration as other state employers voiced their concern over the budget.
“When did we become the enemy,” asked SEANC President Charles Johnson.
Republicans have derided state workers as lazy and overpaid, he said, while cozying up to the private companies that backed their runs.
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