Here & Now

State Budgeting Committee Declines Plans for Youth Prisons

Frederica Freyberg:

Now for an update on the state’s juvenile correctional institutions. Wednesday the Joint Finance Committee voted against funding for two new facilities meant to replace Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools. The replacement facilities were slated for Milwaukee and the town of Hortonia near Appleton. But the Finance Committee blocked building approvals for both sites, with Republicans saying there was not enough money to fund them. Plans called for closing the troubled state-run youth prisons just north of Wausau by 2021. The party-line decision to decline $73 million for the new improved facilities has put those plans in question.