By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

The Norton prison would have to be closed if the Department of Corrections is to meet the 3.4 percent budget reduction proposed by Senate leaders.

Neither Sens. Janis Lee nor Ralph Ostmeyer support the idea.

"I can assure you I'm going to fight for my prison and my schools," said Ostmeyer, R-Grinnell. "And if I have to vote against the leadership, so be it."

The Norton prison has nearly 300 employees whose jobs would be in jeopardy.

The proposal comes amid other bad news in the Norton community, as two of its three manufacturing plants announced layoffs, according to Diane Becker, director of the joint Norton city-county economic development office.

Becker said New Age Industrial Corp. announced it was laying off 18 workers while Natoma Corp. is laying off eight workers. The third manufacturer in Norton, Mill Cut Machine Corp., announced cutbacks in hours for employees, she said.

Absorbing those manufacting jobs might be possible, she said, but not the loss of the Norton prison jobs.

"The prison, that's going to affect a lot of people," Becker said.

Ostmeyer was contacted this morning as he prepared to head to the Senate floor as it convened in Topeka.

On today's agenda was a Senate bill that calls for the reduction of 3.4 percent from the current state budget, or more than $9 million from the Department of Corrections.

To meet those cuts, said DOC spokesman Bill Miskell, the agency would have to close prisons at Norton and Winfield, in addition to cutting offender treatment programs and parole and post-release supervision. The parole cuts also would jeopardize jobs, including several in Hays and throughout northwest Kansas.

The notion of closing the prison is a new development in the budget crunch.

Already, DOC officials had proposed closing the Stockton Correctional Facility. While that closure had been included in the governor's budget proposal, it was scheduled to take place at the end of the fiscal year.

Instead, Miskell said, the agency has moved up its closure to Feb. 27 and already is moving inmates out of the facility.

Stockton has a capacity of 128 inmates but houses only 64. There are 33 staff members working there, many of whom were expecting to transfer to either Norton or Larned correctional facilities once Stockton is closed.

Norton's closure, targeted for April 1 if everything is approved, would put a kink in the transfer of most of those prison employees.

Norton, Miskell said, has 728 inmates and 267 state employees.

Lee led the charge against the bill, with discussion extending well into the afternoon.

Word of the possible closing of Norton surfaced sometime Tuesday, prompting a barrage of phone calls and e-mails to Ostmeyer and Lee. The bill also calls for cutting school aid by 3.4 percent as well, something that could doom the bill.

"I can't even get through my e-mail on my computer," Ostmeyer said this morning.

Lee's office telephone was jammed, repeatedly busy as calls poured in, but she told Juanita Brown in Phillipsburg she was fighting hard against the bill and its efforts to either close the Norton prison or cut payments to state schools.

She was being joined by Mike Michaelis, director of the Ellis County Coalition for Economic Development, in fighting against the effort.

"I don't want it closed," Michaelis said of the prison. "That's a vital part of northwest Kansas."

Ostmeyer in fact said Lee is working on a plan that would save the prison, and Ostmeyer said he is backing her in that effort.

Closing the Norton prison, he said, would wreck the community, given the loss of jobs that would follow. As well, the local school would suffer as a result.

"It's a small community," he said. "It would devastate the community, the schools."

Closing a prison in a rural setting, he contends, would be especially difficult.

"They don't have any job opportunities out there," Ostmeyer said.