By Al Cormier
Director of Thought Leadership, Mi-Case | 30-Year Corrections Veteran | Former Chief of Operations, Vermont DOC
Thirty-six states hold gubernatorial elections this November. Fifteen sitting governors are term-limited. When the dust settles, more than twenty new governors could be appointing new corrections leadership, the largest single turnover in state corrections leadership in a generation.
Every one of those agencies has corrections technology projects and construction programs in flight right now. OMS implementations, jail management systems, electronic health records, risk assessment platforms, body-worn camera programs, reentry case management tools, and facility builds worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Every single one of them just became vulnerable.
The Blind Spot Nobody Plans For
In corrections, we plan for everything: riots, pandemics, escapes, natural disasters. We have COOP plans, emergency succession protocols, and incident command structures we can stand up in hours. But when the person who championed a $25 million OMS implementation gets replaced by a new governor’s appointee, most agencies have no plan at all.
The math explains why. A modern OMS implementation takes 18 to 36 months. A corrections commissioner’s average tenure is often shorter than that. Unless you plan for the gap, the project is exposed.
Billions at Stake, Not Hypothetically
South Dakota is building an $825 million correctional facility. Georgia committed $600 million in a single budget cycle. Arkansas is pushing a $750 million prison that already failed five legislative votes. Minnesota is closing its oldest prison, implementing new legislation, and modernizing its OMS, all while a gubernatorial transition looms. Multiply this across 36 states and the scale of potential disruption becomes clear.
Why New Leaders Kill Inherited Projects
Having sat across the table from new commissioners, I can tell you this: they almost never cancel projects out of malice. They do it because nobody explained the project in operational language. Because they want to establish their own priorities. Because they inherited the contract without inheriting the context. And because the vendor relationship feels like someone else’s choice, not theirs.
Every one of these reasons is preventable.
What You Can Do Right Now
The single most effective thing you can do today is anchor your project to something that outlasts any individual leader. Legislative mandates are the gold standard. If your OMS supports compliance with a sentencing reform law, a risk assessment requirement, or a victim notification statute, document that connection explicitly and make it impossible to miss. A new commissioner can question a predecessor’s technology preferences. They cannot question state law.
Budget appropriations matter too. If the legislature specifically funded the project through a capital budget, a federal grant, or a dedicated line item, that creates accountability. A new director who cancels a legislatively funded project has to explain that to the appropriations committee. That alone changes the calculus.
But anchoring the project is just the first step. In the full piece, I walk through a complete framework for transition-proofing your investments, including how to build governance structures that don’t depend on one person, how to prepare a transition briefing before you need one, and how to cultivate the operational champions who provide continuity regardless of who sits in the executive suite. I also included a 30-day playbook for incoming corrections leaders inheriting technology and construction projects they didn’t start.
Read the full analysis and 30-day playbook
The complete piece includes a state-by-state breakdown of at-risk projects, a detailed framework for transition-proofing your investments, and a 30-day action plan for incoming corrections leaders.
