By Andy Resnik
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - The state will close an 88-year-old prison in northwest Ohio by July to save $25 million a year and help balance Ohio's budget, the prisons director said Tuesday.

Dorms at three other prisons will reopen to help handle the 1,565 inmates from Lima Correctional Institution, which the state says it can no longer afford to operate because of its size and age.

It's the second time in about a year that Ohio has closed a prison because of budget concerns.

"The budget situation is as bad as I've ever seen it, and I've been working in this department for 30 years," said Reginald Wilkinson, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

The department also will offer 800 to 900 workers the option of early retirement and will freeze hiring for nonessential jobs until June 30, the end of the fiscal year, Wilkinson said. The freeze would not apply to corrections officers and health care workers.

"We're not going to think that just closing one prison will save all the money we've been asked to save," he said.

Gov. Bob Taft said in his State of the State speech last week that at least one prison and one juvenile detention center must be closed to help cut costs. The state must close a $720 million deficit by June 30 and could face a $4 billion budget hole in the two years after that.

The governor also proposed raising the taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.

Wilkinson said the state would have had to close two other prisons to equal one as big as Lima, which has 490 employees and an annual operating budget of $36.3 million. The shutdown will leave the state with 32 prisons.

Public employees unions argued that the state should first close its two privately run prisons. Workers at the private prisons in Grafton and Conneaut in northeast Ohio are not unionized.