Politics & Government

Enfield Prison, DMV Office, and Courthouse Among State Buildings to be Closed

Deep budget cuts create need to consolidate and/or eliminate some state buildings and offices.

Deep cuts in the state budget will result in the closing of the Enfield Correctional Institution, the Enfield branch of the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Enfield Superior Court.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy plans to eliminate more than 1,000 positions in the Department of Correction in an effort to trim more than $60 million from that agency's budget. About 400 employees will be laid off, while another 600 positions are currently vacant and will not be filled, according to therepublic.com.

The state will close the Bergin Correctional Institution in Mansfield in August, and the Enfield facility is scheduled to follow suit by October.

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The Enfield prison building, a level 3 medium-security prison on Shaker Road, houses 723 inmates as of July 1, 2011, according to the Department of Correction web site. Nearly half will be transferred to a long-vacant block at the Cheshire Correctional Institution, while the remainder will be dispersed to other prisons in the state.

Meanwhile, the Enfield branch of the DMV, located on Pearson Way, will be one of five offices to be shut down shortly. DMV officials visited the affected branches Wednesday and told employees to expect layoff notices in the coming weeks, according to the Connecticut Post.

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Other DMV offices facing extinction are located in Danbury, New Britain, Old Saybrook and Putnam, as well as the license renewal center in Middletown.

State Sen. John Kissel says the Enfield Superior Court is among the state facilities added to the list of pending closures.

In an e-mail to Enfield Patch, Kissel wrote, “In less than a week, the Malloy administration has announced the closing of three of our major state facilities: Enfield Correctional Institution, the Enfield DMV, and the Enfield Courthouse. The shuttering of these facilities comes as a one, two, three punch to our part of the state and will no doubt have a negative impact on our local economy. I trust that Enfield is not the only area of the state taking these multiple targeted hits, but these closures will certainly make taxpayers’ lives even more difficult here in north central Connecticut.”

The closures are part of a plan to balance the two-year, $40.1 billion state budget. The governor has said the failure of state employee unions to ratify a $1.6 billion concessions package necessitates the spending cuts.

Malloy and Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman issued a joint statement Thursday: “To be clear, this is not the road down which either of us wanted to go. It’s the reason we both worked hard and in good faith to come to an agreement with SEBAC that would have avoided the layoffs of rank-and-file state employees and managers. But at this point, with no clear path to reach a ratified agreement with SEBAC, it’s our job to find a way to fill the $1.6 billion hole in the budget and ensure our budget is balanced honestly. Tomorrow we’ll send our full plan to the legislature, including these layoff numbers and additional service and programmatic cuts totaling $1.6 billion. And then we’ll work as hard as we can to mitigate the impact these layoffs and cuts will have on the people of Connecticut.”


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