Lawmakers release funding for Mendota youth treatment center after six-month delay

Lawmakers on the state's powerful budget committee Tuesday morning released funding to hire more staff at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center outside of Madison.

The Joint Finance Committee of the Wisconsin Legislature approved the request to fund 124 staff positions at the facility, nearly six months after the request was initially made by the Department of Administration and the Department of Health Services.

In a press release from co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, he said Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee received the information it needed from the Department of Health Services, which prompted the approval.

"Republicans in the Legislature have been strongly committed to the goal of closing Lincoln Hills and to improving juvenile corrections in Wisconsin," he said in the release. "Our questions for DHS were to ensure that we were making responsible fiscal choices and we now believe that we are."

Earlier this month, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said that the inaction on the funding for the Mendota facility was holding up the plan to close the embattled Lincoln Hills Schools for boys and Copper Lake School for girls in Irma. The two schools for troubled youth have long struggled with many issues, including the death of guard Corey Proulx after an altercation with 16-year-old resident Javarius Hurd.

Charges were also filed earlier this month against a guard from Copper Lake after he allegedly threw a girl into a wall during a disagreement, causing a cut in need of stitches and days of headaches.

The 124 staff positions that will be funded with the money the committee released are just one part of the multi-step process to carry out a law to close the youth prisons.

A spokesperson for the governor did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday.

Marklein also pushed back on the claims that the committee was somehow at fault for the death of Proulx. He said that approving the staffing numbers earlier this year wouldn't have immediately employed more people at Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center, because the new additions to the facility won't start accepting patients until later this year.

In addition, there could have been many different reasons Hurd wasn't transferred to Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center from Lincoln Hills, and it isn't clear if a transfer request was ever actually made, he said.

"The fact is that Republicans in the Legislature want to fix the problems in our correctional system, as evidenced by the significant investments we have made to increase staff pay, construct new facilities and expand MJTC," he said. "However, the Governor has adopted policies that undermine staff, put both staff and inmates at risk and ignore obvious issues. These are leadership problems. Not money problems."

Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on X at @SchulteLaura.