Budget conference: Chambers disconnect on free prison phone calls that cost taxpayers nothing

Budget conference: Chambers disconnect on free prison phone calls that cost taxpayers nothing

A plan to revive a free prison phone call program that Gov. Ron DeSantis killed last year is at risk of dying as House and Senate lawmakers don’t yet agree on whether to fund it. The $1 million contemplated for the program, which the Senate wants to approve and the House doesn’t, wouldn’t come from the state’s tax coffers. Rather, it would come out of the Inmate Welfare Trust Fund, a pool of funds generated from in-prison vending machines, inmat…