Kansas City News Blog

Most of the time, the conservative watchdog group called Americans for Prosperity strike us as a bit hysterical. According to their Web site, the group’s harmless-sounding mission is to “advocate for public policies that champion the principles of entrepreneurship and fiscal and regulatory restraint.” But it's outraged at a $1 million grant for a Woodstock museum and nauseated over the idea that the federal government might kick in $100,000 for an online weight-loss program in Iowa — where more than 25 percent of residents are clinically obese.

But we had to agree when the conservative group singled out an “egregious” earmark proposed by Kansas Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda. On Tuesday, the group held a press conference
across the street from the Lansing Correctional Facility — props included little kids dressed in prison stripes and burdened with the ball-and-chain of “debt” around their tiny necks — to indict Boyda’s proposed $1.2 million federal appropriation for the Kansas Regional Prisons Museum.

Still on the drawing board, the $3 million museum would be enclosed by high stone walls and would include exhibits of prisoner pictures and memorabilia from the four corrections institutions in Leavenworth County. It would feature replica jail cells and a gallows chamber as well as two guard towers, one of which would allow visitors to peer out at the Lansing prison.

AFP’s Kansas director, Alan Cobb, says there are better ways to spend taxpayers’ money than giving them the opportunity to pay admission to feel imprisoned. “You have to make a judgment call on what doesn’t pass the smell test,” he tells us. “Certainly, a museum with fake gallows and fake guard towers is a little tough to justify.”

Thomas Seay, a spokesman for Boyda, sent the Pitch a prepared response to the criticism. “Of the 435 Members of Congress, only a handful have released their 2008 appropriations requests,” the statement said. “Rep. Boyda is among that handful because she strongly supports transparency and accountability in the federal budget. Of course, running a transparent office means opening yourself up to all kinds of political potshots, including the completely unfounded kind.”

Many of AFP’s potshots are unfounded, but in Boyda’s case, the group highlighted an interesting coincidence. Cobb and his compatriots held their rally exactly a week after Boyda had stopped in Leavenworth to hold a press conference with fellow Congressman Dennis Moore. The two Kansas reps decried the overcrowded and underfunded federal prison system and called for an $837 million increase in funding for the Bureau of Prisons. In a letter to the chair of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science last month, Boyda (and seven other U.S. reps) suggested that prisons are so understaffed that facilities such as Leavenworth have become critically dangerous places to work.

So why spend $1.2 million on a dubious tourist attraction that celebrates a system that has been plagued with instances of abuse and injustice? Not to mention, the $1.2 million grant is aimed not at the construction of the building itself but at interior elements — perhaps some nice prisoner-manufactured furniture for the 3,300-square-foot gift shop.

Seay responded to the apparent contradiction with an abbreviated e-mail. “Both are important projects for Leavenworth County,” he wrote to us.

Cobb disagrees. While the group held its press conference, he watched the prison guards going to work at Lansing. “The more money you spend on a prison museum, the less there is for things you ought to spend money on, like guards getting fairly compensated and making sure there’s enough space in the prison.” – Carolyn Szczepanski