McCreadie to introduce third version of prison bill

by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - Senator Brant McCreadie is hoping a third time will be the charm with legislation to build a new prison on Guam. It was just last week when he introduced Bill 313 - an amended version of the original Department of Corrections Construction Initiative Act of 2013. It was last year when McCreadie introduced the initial measure however that languished in Senator Ben Pangelinan's Committee on Appropriations for over eight months.

"I'm going to introduce a third version of the prison bill and w hat that does is basically gives GEDA the option to explore public private partnerships to build a prison and so we're trying to be very general in our approach to this piece of legislation but at the same time we want to work together with the chairman and hopefully he sees fit to work with us so we can move this initiative forward," he said.

The second version of the bill removed mention of a mandated appropriation and instead gave the Guam Economic Development Authority the mission of finding the best financial route to build the new prison. McCreadie says the third will be more generalized over the statutes the bill would mandate.