Fumo set to report to Ky. prison today

ASHLAND, Ky. - Former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo's new, assigned residence doesn't match the grandeur of the 27-room mansion he maintains in Philadelphia or the 100-acre farm he owns near Harrisburg.

Maybe it's the razor wire.

Fumo, for three decades a dominant force in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, is scheduled to report today to the federal prison here, to begin serving his 55-month sentence for corruption. Some people here have heard he's coming and how he feels about that.

"He's not happy with going to prison down here," Ashland City Manager Stephen Corbitt said. "I guess if I was going to prison, I'd want to be closer to my hometown, too."

Fumo's attorneys have fought his assignment to the Ashland institution, contending that the 525-mile trip would be difficult for his fiancee and grown children. But designation to a particular prison is an administrative decision, not a court matter, and there's been no sign that federal authorities have changed their minds about where Fumo should serve his time.

Meanwhile, editors at the local newspaper, the Daily Independent, are indignant that a highfalutin' pol from Philadelphia would balk at spending time in their community. Fumo's reluctance smacks of the bad old days, when employees transferred here by the Ashland Inc. chemical company would complain they were "doing three to five" in Ashland.

"Many of those people," the paper told Fumo in a Saturday editorial, "came to like living here. . . . Of course, since he will spend his time here behind bars, Fumo is unlikely to experience Ashland the way we do."

And that, the paper said, is his loss.

Ashland sits snug on the Ohio River, hard by the borders of Ohio and West Virginia in the highlands of northeast Kentucky. It's home to 22,000, down from its 1960 peak of 31,300, the erosion of coal and steel industries sweeping away jobs.

But Ashland remains remarkably stable and well-kept. People are polite and helpful; theirs is the kind of town where the waitresses at Bob Evans call everybody "Hon" and the Southern accents are as full as the churches. Violent crime is practically unknown. Political attitudes are conservative, and city laws ban taverns and bars. Life centers on family, religion, and high school football.

"People take a lot of pride in the city," said Tony Love, who helps coach the team.

Famous sons? Not many.

The country music duo the Judds - mother Naomi and daughter Wynonna - hail from Ashland. They're honored with a public square called Judd Plaza.

Former Army reservist Lynndie England, the public face of the horrific Abu Ghraib prison scandal, comes from Ashland. So does a woman named Kathleen Maddox, who at 16 gave birth to a son the world would know as Charles Manson.

Today, the biggest employer is King's Daughters Medical Center, but the 1,600-inmate prison supplies plenty of steady jobs. The institution sits five miles southwest of town amid green rolling hills, not far from a church, a school, and numerous houses. Nobody here pays it much attention.

What's officially called the Federal Correctional Institution Ashland is composed of two prisons, one beside the other. The main prison is a low-security institution that houses male inmates. Next to that is a less-restrictive, minimum-security camp.

Ashland prison officials denied a request for a tour of the facilities.

It's unclear whether Fumo has been assigned to the prison or the camp, though inmates like him - white-collar criminals serving short sentences - typically go to the latter.

One advantage of serving time at Ashland is that some camp inmates can join a program that lets them work outside at a nearby government forest, under the supervision of park rangers, said Steve Vincent, who served two years at the Ashland prison and now runs Federal Prison Consultant Services, advising defendants and attorneys on life behind bars.

"It is probably the best inmate job to have at any prison in America," he said.

The only negative about the Ashland camp, Vincent said, is it has a fence; many federal camps don't.

From the outside, the camp doesn't look intimidating. On Saturday evening, a group of inmates was playing a spirited game of basketball. Their cheers and calls echoed across the hills. The prison, though, is built of sterner stuff, with an old-style spotlight that could have come straight from a Jimmy Cagney movie.

And not everyone thinks Ashland is a good place to serve time. On the www.prisontalk.com Web site, where inmates' families trade information, the reviews are mixed.

"The conditions for the inmates are terrible," wrote Mandy, whose husband is held there. "It's dirty, there are bugs everywhere and the food is horrible."

But another woman said her husband was "comfortable, treated with respect, and has made many positive contacts with inmates. I think he expected the worst, and got pleasantly surprised."

It's doubtful Fumo will be pleasantly surprised by prison life.

In March he was convicted of all 137 counts of mail and wire fraud, tax offenses, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. At sentencing, Fumo's lawyers asked the judge to recommend that he go to the prison in Lewisburg, Pa. The judge obliged, but the Bureau of Prisons assigned Fumo to Ashland.

The prison hasn't held many notables, though former West Virginia Gov. Arch Moore served time there after pleading guilty to extortion and related crimes.

One thing is sure: When Fumo's lawyers said traveling to Ashland would be hard on his family, they weren't kidding: there's no easy way to get there from Philadelphia.

Ashland is too small to have a commercial airport, so visitors can fly nonstop to Cincinnati or Columbus, Ohio, or make a laborious connection to Lexington, Ky., or to Charleston, W.Va.

By the time you compute the time spent at airports, traveling in the air, and driving the last few miles, you might as well drive the whole way - an up-the-hill, down-the-hill marathon that can take nine hours.

Ashland's history reaches to the 1780s, when the Poage family left the Shenandoah Valley and created a settlement on the Ohio River.

Today, the town jewel stands on Winchester Avenue, the striking art deco Paramount Theater, completed in 1931. Paramount Pictures planned to replicate the same movie house in each of the 48 states, even exhibiting a prototype at the Chicago World's Fair.

But the Depression put an end to nationwide construction plans, and only a few theaters were built. Today, operating as the Paramount Arts Center, the renovated theater looks much as it did on opening night, with brass entrance doors and a foyer lighted by copper-and-glass chandeliers.

People come to see classic films and to cheer at concerts by stars like Ricky Scaggs and Willie Nelson.

"We're not the image the national media presents, where you hear 'Dueling Banjos,' " said Mayor Tom Kelley, who was born and raised here, and who previously served as chief of police.

He had heard that Fumo didn't want to come to Ashland. But this is no backwoods, he said. If you eliminated the state lines and grouped Ashland with just-across-the-river communities in Ohio and West Virginia, you'd have a city of 300,000, he said.

"I don't know whether they picture this as some holler - that's not the case," Kelley said. "It's a nice place to live and raise a family."

Of course, said Corbitt, the city manager, to Fumo it won't matter whether Ashland holds delights or disappointments, given the limits of his assigned residence.

"I'm afraid," Corbitt said, "he won't be able to enjoy the town too much."