Agency head: Payments are state's fault
Source: The Associated Press (FL), January 27, 2007
More than $4.5 million in questionable payments to two companies that run five private prisons resulted from the state's contract concessions, not overcharges by the firms, a top state official said Friday. After a Florida Senate leader asked for an investigation of her agency's settlement with one of the companies, Department of Management Services Secretary Linda South blamed the concessions on the state's now-defunct Correctional Privatization Commission.