Hal Rogers is using political tricks to force an unneeded federal prison in Letcher | Opinion

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers (KY - 05) is at it again, resorting to legislative tricks to push through the proposal for Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Letcher. Rogers has been trying for nearly 20 years to bring a prison to Letcher County, despite opposition to the project from numerous constituencies, including the White House under both the Trump and Biden Administrations and, at times, the Bureau of Prisons itself.

A coalition of concerned residents in Letcher County, environmental groups, and criminal justice reform organizations helped to defeat an earlier attempt to build the prison in 2019 after the BOP was forced to admit that the prison was unnecessary given the declining federal prison population. Then, just two months after devastating flooding in Eastern Kentucky, the BOP announced in September 2022 the resumption of efforts to build the prison.

If built, FCI Letcher would be the fourth federal prison Rogers has brought to Eastern Kentucky under the banner of rural job creation, despite no evidence of this as a successful economic development strategy. At over half a billion dollars, FCI Letcher would also be the most expensive federal prison ever built. As the federal prison population continues to decline, Rogers’s appetite for prisons is both indefensible and insatiable.

So, what has Rogers done this time? From his seat as the Chairman of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee, Rogers has inserted a rider (an additional provision) in the House Appropriations Act for 2025. The rider, Section 223, would restrict lawsuits concerning the construction of the prison to the Eastern District of Kentucky. Currently, the BOP is moving through the federally mandated environmental review process required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Significantly, the defeat of the prison in 2019 came after the conclusion of the earlier NEPA process, when a group of eastern Kentuckians joined a lawsuit that had been filed by people in prison against the BOP. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Presumably, Congressman Rogers believes a future NEPA lawsuit would have a different outcome if plaintiffs were forced to file it in a courtroom in his district.

This is not the first time that Rogers has tried to use his leverage on the powerful subcommittee to circumvent public process and accountability. In the FY 2024 budget markup, filed in 2023, he inserted Section 219, a rider that had major implications for judicial and environmental review as well as public accountability. Section 219 would have stripped judicial review from the process, effectively saying that no one could sue the Bureau of Prisons or the Attorney General regarding the “construction or operation” of the prison.

In addition, Section 219 instructed the Attorney General and the BOP to bypass the NEPA process by relying on an outdated environmental impact study from 2017, as if there had never been massive floods in Eastern Kentucky in July 2022. A Wall Street Journal article from June 2023 noted that Letcher County has “the largest hidden flood risk in the U.S,” making it a dangerous location to have over a thousand people locked up with limited access to roads in the event that evacuation becomes necessary.

Fortunately, Rogers’ colleagues in the House removed Section 219 from the House Appropriations bill. As we noted, the BOP is engaging in a new NEPA process, although the agency’s consideration of the risk of flooding, wildfires, and other environmental hazards is woefully incomplete. Congressman Rogers is undeterred, and Section 223, while not as capacious as 219, nonetheless shares its aim at fast-tracking a prison that few seem to want.

Instead of pursuing a failed strategy of economic development and deepening the region’s dependence on mass incarceration, Rogers would do well to pursue alternative development and infrastructure ideas that would actually benefit a local economy still reeling from both coal’s decline and the floods: housing, roads and bridges, solar and renewable industry, a 4-year college with free tuition for local people, expanded access to mental health care and other forms of child and adolescent support, and ecotourism.

As Kentuckians concerned about mass incarceration and the future of Letcher County, it is alarming to participate in important congressional mandates like NEPA only to have the congressperson tasked with protecting those mandates actively attempting to subvert them.

Protecting democracy is basic to a free people. Rep. Rogers: Shame on you, again. We urge your colleagues in congress to rise and oppose Section 223.

Artie Ann Bates, MD, is a psychiatrist and writer in Letcher County. Judah Schept, Ph.D., is the author of “Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia.” Attica Scott is a former State Representative and Director of Special Projects at Forward Justice Action Network.