Republican legislators want to sell a 120-year-old prison in northeastern Wisconsin and open a new facility.
Rep. Dave Steffen and Sen. Frank Lasee have introduced a bill that calls for selling the Green Bay Correctional Institution and building a new prison in Brown County or an adjacent county. It would be privately owned but the state would lease and run it.
Steffen and Lasee wrote in a memo seeking co-sponsors that the prison is over capacity and needs extensive maintenance work. Decommissioning the current prison also would free up land for re-development.
The bill doesn't lay out a selling price or allocate any money for leasing a new prison.
A public hearing on the measure is set for Tuesday.
