COLUMBUS — Ohio’s death row will move to Toledo “in the near future.”

The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced today that those awaiting execution will be moved roughly 190 miles to the Toledo Correctional Institution from the Chillicothe Correctional Institution.

Opened in 2000, Toledo is a newer high-security facility that the department says is better equipped to handle inmates with physical and mobility problems. The average age for a death row inmate is nearly 50.

The lethal injection chamber will remain at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, so inmates would have to be transported more than 200 miles from Toledo for executions.

DRC spokesman JoEllen Smith said the prison will not say when the inmate transfer between Chillicothe and Toledo will occur for security reasons, saying only that it would happen “in the near future.”

“We do not have firm cost estimates,” she said. “However, this was not a fiscal decision. Director (Gary) Mohr made this decision as part of the agency’s ongoing evaluation of our population management strategies.

“Reducing density will enhance DRC’s ongoing violence reduction efforts and improve safety for staff and inmates,” she said. “Expanded capacity is critical to managing a large correctional system.”

The state’s prisons held 50,739 inmates as of September, about 30 percent over the prisons’ designed capacity.

Chillicothe’s population currently houses about 125 death-row inmates. The state figures it will be able to double up the number of prisoners in cells that now hold a single death-row inmate.

State Sen. Edna Brown (D., Toledo), who serves on the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, was not happy to learn of the move at roughly the same time the public announcement was being made.

“This has been going on behind closed doors, and that troubles me,” she said. “Something of this magnitude should not be discussed behind closed doors without any input from the legislature, the union, or anybody else.”

She said a citizen’s advisory committee at the Toledo prison should have been included in the discussions given the prison’s close proximity to a residential community.

“If the legislature would pass my bill doing away with the death penalty, there would be no need for them to move these inmates,” Ms. Brown said.

The Toledo prison, which houses both maximum and close-security inmates, already houses some inmates one per cell, Ms. Smith said. This will allow for the transfer of one inmate to another facility for every death row inmate brought in.

Ms. Smith said DRC will take proximity to inmates’ family into consideration when deciding where to transfer inmates.

“That is taken into consideration any time an inmate changes his or her institution,” Ms. Smith said.

The move is expected to lead to a staffing increase at Toledo, but Ms. Smith said there will not be a corresponding decrease in staffing in Chillicothe. The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union representing state correctional officers, was also informed of the move today.

Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson said she was unsure what effect the transfer might have on the city.

"I need additional information," she said. "I had a brief conversation with the warden there, and as more information is available I will have a better sense of the true impact it will have on the city."

The mayor said operations of the prison are self-contained.

"They will not be doing executions here," she said. "They will house them here."

Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp said the move would not affect his operations

"Nothing they have done at the state level has affected us…," he said. “It is prison, and that is what prisons are for — to house inmates," he said.

Mike Brickner, senior policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, noted that the organization has generally advocated for better treatment of a prison population that is getting grayer and sicker.

But they were not involved in any discussions about moving death row to Toledo.

“Having to continuously move death row shows that it continues to cost the state quite a bit of money to maintain, and we’re not getting much from that,” Mr. Brickner said. “We have 125 or so prisoners of death row while executions are at a standstill.”

Ohio last executed an inmate nearly three years ago as it, like other states with capital punishment, have struggled to find the drugs they would prefer to use to carry out lethal injections. The domestic and overseas makers of the drugs have refused to make them available for executions.

The state recently modified its execution protocol again, notifying federal court that it intends to resume executions in January using a new three-drug combination. It plans to execute Ronald R. Phillips, formerly of Akron, on Jan. 12 using an intravenous combination of midazolam, an anti-anxiety medication; rocuronium bromide, a paralytic agent, and finally potassium chloride, designed to stop the heart.

Staff writer Ignazio Messina contributed to this report.

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

First Published October 21, 2016, 6:30 p.m.