DENVER-
A state lawmaker called on the Department of Corrections to rescind a contract for a private prison in Ault, saying the company failed to deliver on a previous contract and never should have been allowed to bid on the new 1,500-bed facility.
Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, said GEO Group lost its contract to build a detention facility in Pueblo because it delayed the start of construction, then tried to renegotiate its contract to get a guarantee that it would be paid for 90 percent occupancy, even if beds were not filled.
“Basically, the state of Colorado was held hostage for four years. They didn’t even break ground,” McFadyen said.
A spokesman for GEO Group did not return a call seeking a response.
McFadyen said the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is trying to determine whether the contract was tainted after a former top state prisons official set up a prison consulting business while still employed by the state and helped GEO Group try to land a $100 million contract for the new prison.
Auditors refused to identify the official, who told auditors that if the company he represents gets the contract, he would get about $1 million. McFadyen identified the former state employee as former director of prisons Nolin Renfrow.
Renfrow had no listed phone number. Last June, he told the Rocky Mountain News he had no role in one prison bid request, but it was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the Ault project.
Renfrow said at the time he was under contract with GEO’s bidding partner, not GEO. He also said his new job as a prison consultant had been cleared by the attorney general’s office.
McFadyen said the state should cancel plans to pay GEO Group to build a new 1,500 bed facility in Ault and rebid the contract because the company had an unfair bidding advantage with help from Renfrow. She said the company also failed to honor a 2003 agreement to build and manage a 500-bed pre-parole facility in Pueblo, demanding that the state guarantee funding that wasn’t included in the original bid.
Alison Morgan, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said Ari Zavaras, the new director of prisons, was not in charge at the time the contract was awarded. She said Zavaras will review the request and decide later how to respond.
