Perdue: Move Corrections headquarters to Tift College

<p>ATLANTA _ Gov. Sonny Perdue plans to move the state prison system's headquarters from Atlanta to the old Tift College campus in Forsyth.</p><p>Perdue said in a news release that his fiscal 2007 budget proposal will include $7.5 million to allow the Georgia Department of Corrections begin preparing to make the move.</p><p>"Moving the Department of Corrections to central Georgia is a sound business decision," Perdue said. "This relocation will promote the OneGeorgia concept, decentralize state government and enhance good stewardship of public dollars."</p><p>The agency has five prisons north of Atlanta and 35 prisons south of Macon. Its headquarters works out of five offices in Atlanta. Moving the headquarters to Forsyth will relocate 400 central office staff positions, an estimated annual payroll of $25 million. It is expected to save the department $4 million annually in rent. The prison system will keep a small office in Atlanta for use by the Board of Corrections.</p><p>Assistant corrections commissioner Brian Owens said the prison system has 14,000 employees and currently trains more than 12,000 a year at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, also in Forsyth. He said moving the training to the Tift College campus will free up space for local and state law enforcement agencies to use the state training center.</p><p>"We know we can do everything at Tift College with the exception of live-fire exercises," he said.</p><p>If Perdue's proposal gets legislative approval, the department could make its move by late 2008 or early 2009.</p><p>The $7.5 million will be used for design, site work and other preliminary work on the campus, which was founded in 1847 and takes in 40 acres and 225,000 square feet of building space. Mercer University purchased Tift College and closed it in 1987. The campus has been mostly unused since then.</p>

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