Prison system shuffles leaders
By Andy Gates - Argus Observer
Tuesday, June 5, 2007 11:31 AM PDT
ONTARIO - New business cards may be in order because titles are changing for at least five top-ranking Oregon Department of Corrections employees affiliated with the Snake River Correctional Institution.
In what are called routine changes, key local players within the ODOC administrative network are being shuffled into different positions at the state’s largest prison.
For example, the fourth and longest serving superintendent at the Snake River Correctional Institution, Jean Hill, has been moved to a nearby superintendent slot at Powder River Correctional Institution in Baker City.
“I will continue my journey at Powder River and look forward to new adventures there. There’s just not enough I can say about the good work you do each and every day at SRCI . . . It has been an honor to work with you as part of the SRCI team,” Hill said in an e-mail to staff Friday, which was relayed Monday to the Argus Observer by SRCI Spokeswoman Amber Campbell.
Hill has served as superintendent of SRCI since 2002. She is the fourth person to lead the facility since its inception in August 1991.
The superintendent at Powder River Correctional Facility, Judy Gilmore, will be coming back to SRCI to hold the same position she filled from 2000 to June 2006. She worked at SRCI as the assistant superintendent of transition services, Campbell said.
Taking over for Hill in the superintendent slot at SRCI, will be the prison’s current assistant superintendent of general services Mark Nooth. Nooth has been with both ODOC and SRCI since September 2003, and he has been working in corrections for 25 years, Campbell said.
SRCI Assistant Superintendent of Security Steve Franke will step into Nooth’s general services slot.
Franke has been with ODOC since 1985 when he began his career as a correctional officer, Campbell said.
Franke and Hill both came to SRCI together from similar posts at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton in 2002.
Taking Franke’s post of assistant superintendent of security, will be Jamie Miller, who is the current assistant superintendent of transition services at SRCI, Campbell said.
At least two other prisons in Oregon are also changing administrative personnel.
The Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville is apparently also undergoing a changing of the guards. A new acting superintendent will come on and the prison’s existing superintendent, Bill Hoefel, will head to DOC’s central office in Salem, Campbell said.
Also, ODOC Director Max Williams appointed Don Mills to be the superintendent of Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, which became effective Friday. Mills has been the acting superintendent of the EOCI since December, according to a press release Thursday from the ODOC.
Changes at the administrative level are routine, prison officials said.
“Routinely, the department of corrections will make changes at the administration level in institutions and at the central office,” Campbell said.
Those changes are apparently not a new phenomenon.
“Movements of staff among institutions and around the state are becoming the norm instead of the exception. We all work as part of a team, and moving players to different positions can strengthen that team,” according to a 2002 DOC news release. The staff changes at SRCI become effective June 15, Campbell said.
Hill and Nooth were unavailable Monday for comment, she said.
SRCI is a multi-security facility which opened in August 1991. It was designed to have 3,000 beds, and represented the largest general funded public works project in state history.
The institution’s operating budget is in excess of $100 million per biennium and employs 1,000 corrections professionals, according to the ODOC Web site.
