PHOTO: Courtesy of WLUK
MADISON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Both Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature say they want the aging Green Bay Correctional Institution to close.
But how they accomplish that still needs to be worked out.
In signing the 2025-27 state budget in the early morning hours on Thursday, Evers vetoed a provision that would have set a deadline of 2029 for the prison in Allouez to close.
Evers called it the most important of his 23 vetoes.
“We just took the date out,” he said. “We’re going to close it, but we need more compromise on that. We need to get things going before we start taking people out of Green Bay Correctional.”
GBCI has been the subject of years of complaints of inhumane conditions, including an infestation of mice.
While several dominoes need to fall before GBCI can close, the budget takes the first step. It provides more than $130.7 million to build a new youth prison in Dane County. That prison would replace the troubled Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake juvenile facilities in northern Wisconsin. Lincoln Hills would then be converted into an adult facility.
“A lot of the medium-security prisoners that are held, improperly, at Green Bay Correctional, because it’s a maximum-security facility, would go to a place like a refurbished Lincoln Hills, and then you could kind of shuffle around the maximum-security guys to other maximum-security prisons and close GBCI,” said State Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto.
Additionally, the budget provides $15 million to develop preliminary plans and specifications for facility realignment and the eventual closure of the Green Bay prison.
“If you were to do the Lincoln Hills conversion and also do an expansion at one of the other medium-security prisons, you could actually close Green Bay Correctional by 2029,” Wimberger maintained.
There are still sticking points, though, as to the next steps. Evers released a corrections reform plan last winter, but Republican lawmakers remain skeptical.
“The Evers correction plan expands earned release to people who are not now eligible, to even criminals like carjackers and robbers,” Wimberger said. “And his plan to ultimately close Green Bay Correctional is a policy change that will let criminals into your neighborhood on electronic monitoring if they do just some rehabilitative programming.”
“(The budget veto is) more of a message that the Legislature needs to work together with us to get a plan,” Evers said. “We have a plan that’s out there and hopefully they will work with us on that.”
Allouez village president Jim Rafter expressed disappointment in the veto. In a statement, he said:
Last night’s partial veto by the governor is a depiction of how broken our state government is. Despite Republicans and Democrats lining up in support for a timely closure of GBCI, our state budget now merely provides funds to further study the issue. The time for studying has come and gone. The Village of Allouez and our community demand action and the certainty they deserve about when this facility will be closed.
Green Bay Correctional Institution opened in 1898.
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