Corrections employees to get food stamp information

<br>OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ The financially strapped state Corrections Department, which will give workers 23 days of unpaid leave over an eight-month period, will include food stamp information in employee

Friday, September 27th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ The financially strapped state Corrections Department, which will give workers 23 days of unpaid leave over an eight-month period, will include food stamp information in employee pay envelopes.

Employee furloughs from November to June should save the department $15 million. It is facing an $18.6 million budget shortfall because state tax revenues have declined along with the state's economy.

The Oklahoma Public Employees Association says the furloughs will cost the average corrections worker $300 a month. The group is calling for a special session of the Legislature to address the funding crisis.

Most corrections employees are officers who earn from $1,722 to nearly $2,300 a month.

To qualify for food stamps, a family of three cannot make more than $2,316 a month, according to state Health Department guidelines. That number rises if the family is larger.

As a new corrections officer, Kent McCalister is on the bottom of the pay scale.

He spends his mornings at college in Seminole and works nights at the Joseph Harp Correctional Center in Lexington.

His monthly pay of $1,722 goes to feed a family of four. His paycheck will be slashed by about $300 a month when the furloughs begin in November.

He said he likely will have to quit school and get a second job.

``Basically, I'm living paycheck to paycheck,'' McCalister said Thursday. ``It's not like we have outstanding debt. It's just rent and a car payment.''

Jerry Massie, corrections department spokesman, said plans are being drawn up to allow for the furloughs while still maintaining adequate staffing.

``It won't be business as usual,'' he said. ``We'll have to look at every facility and every work location and put together a plan on implementing furloughs.

``If we don't have enough uniform staff to fill posts, non-uniform staff with correctional experience would fill some of those positions.''