After intense opposition to a prison privatization plan linked to disgraced former House Speaker Ray Sansom and slipped into the budget late last week, Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander has apparently backed off his proposal to shut down up to three prisons and outsource another.

Alexander’s plan drew allegations of foul play from the Police Benevolent Association, the powerful union that represents prison guards and frequently backs GOP candidates, and Gov. Charlie Crist’s Secretary of Corrections Walt McNeil.

The privatization plan would have shut down enough prisons to fill the Blackwater facility in the Panhandle that the state hired Boca Raton-based Geo Group Inc. to build and operate. But the prison population hasn’t grown as anticipated and there aren’t enough inmates to fill the 2,224-bed Blackwater without shutting down other state-run prisons and putting guards out of work.

McNeil said Friday he would have to shut down five prisons and let inmates out early to comply with a federal court order under the Senate’s proposal that would cut about $60 million in salaries.

Under the new plan, expected to be introduced as a budget amendment today by Democratic Leader Al Lawson, the department would gradually fill Blackwater by closing 17 dorms in other prisons, something McNeil favors.

Critics of the proposal also filed complaints with State Attorney Willie Meggs and U.S. Attorney Thomas Kirwin, both in Leon County, alleging that the Blackwater deal was done in secrecy and questioning Sansom’s association with it. Sansom put the original $110 million to the build the prison into the 2008 budget in a floor amendment and tried to guarantee that it would be built as an annex to the Graceville prison that Geo operates.

The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that are a staple of state prisoners’ diet aren’t just nutritionally filling.

They’re also saving money and jobs, according to the Department of Corrections.

DOC officials came to the rescue of Tampa peanut butter manufacturer Ernest Turbeville, whose business was flailing when he sent an e-mail to Gov. Charlie Crist earlier this year.

Turbeville was unsuccessful in getting DOC’s food vendor to contract with his Sunshine Peanut Company.

By the time he wrote to Crist in March, DOC had already fired its vendors and taken food service back in-house.

Turbeville said he could keep the 14 workers at the Jackonsville-based company on the job for about three weeks.

The agency signed on with Turbeville, according to a press release issued by DOC this morning, and saved the state $200,000 by buying the peanut butter from him.

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