Prisons the biggest recipient of Alabama's education stimulus dollars
Published: Sunday, December 19, 2010, 6:00 AM
Alabama’s biggest recipient of federal education stimulus dollars thus far is not a local school system or a college: It’s the Department of Corrections, according to a Press-Register analysis.
The agency has received $118 million of $1.1 billion in stimulus funding doled out to the state by the U.S. Department of Education since 2009. The money covered health care costs for 26,000 inmates, and salaries and benefits for about 4,200 corrections officers and other employees for three and a half months, officials said.
The spending was legal: Governors were allowed to give up to 18 percent of the funding to areas