Procurement guidelines require state agencies, under most circumstances, to buy their furniture from Ohio Penal Industries, a series of prison-based factories intended to teach inmates marketable skills, generate revenue and, in theory, save state government a good deal of money.

Some state agencies, it turns out, have bought hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise from the program -- too much, at least one government watchdog group contends.

Other agencies, however, have gone to the other extreme, seemingly ignoring the state's procurement guidelines and instead buying large quantities of furniture from outside vendors.

"It's an abuse of the taxpayers," said Columbus attorney Henry Eckhart, a member of the executive committee of Common Cause/Ohio.

Eckhart said he thinks it's outrageous, for example, that the Ohio Department of Health spent about $449,000 on prison-made furniture during a recent two-year period analyzed by WBNS-TV (Channel 10).

That's far more than any other state agency spent on such furnishings.

About $200,000 went toward top-end chairs manufactured at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution. Models costing about $650 apiece can be found throughout the Health Department's offices at 246 N. High St.

"Why? Didn't they have chairs?" Eckhart said in response to the TV station's findings.

"They certainly shouldn't have a larger number of employees there now than they had two or four years ago, so I'd be very skeptical."

Even if the Health Department needed new chairs, Eckhart said, it didn't need such expensive models. Ohio Penal Industries makes chairs that are less than half the price of most of those purchased by the Health Department.

"I sit at my desk all day," Eckhart said. "I've got a chair behind my desk that I bought at Staples for about $200 -- 10 years ago -- and it's perfectly adequate now."

The purchasing spree apparently didn't sit well with Dr. Alvin Jackson, who was named head of the Health Department last year.

"The first thing I did was put a moratorium on all purchases as it relates to furniture and equipment," Jackson told WBNS. "The moratorium is giving us an opportunity to take a look at how we do business."

Other state agencies, meanwhile, are looking at why they didn't turn to Ohio Penal Industries for their furniture needs.

Under the procurement guidelines, the only time a state office doesn't have to buy its furniture from the program is when "the articles cannot be furnished" by inmates.

When prison-made furniture isn't available and an agency has to buy from an outside company, agency officials are supposed to get a formal waiver -- from Ohio Penal Industries -- that spells out their justification.

State officials obtained such a waiver to help furnish the offices of Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher with pieces produced by an Indiana company that charged far more than Ohio Penal Industries would have.

The purchase included several bookcases that cost $1,600 each and credenzas priced at $2,000 apiece. Similar items made by Ohio inmates would have cost, at most, $469 and $714, respectively.

Presented with the receipts, Fisher said aides to Strickland's predecessor, Republican Bob Taft, were intent on providing the incoming administration with a welcoming gift of sorts.

"It was actually the Taft administration that bought the furniture for the Strickland-Fisher administration because they felt that was a tradition that has gone on for decades," Fisher said.

Jon Allison, Taft's former chief of staff, said the Strickland-Fisher administration knew about the purchase and signed off on it.

Either way, officials under the lieutenant governor's supervision bought more furniture from an outside company shortly after Fisher took office.

Fisher didn't get any of that furniture for his own office, but the Ohio Department of Development, which he oversees, shelled out $37,000 for commercially made furnishings -- including cherry desks, cabinets and bookshelves -- in just a few months.

In at least three instances, the agency failed to secure the required waivers.

"I think that we should always be seeking waivers, and if we didn't seek waivers, I'd like to know about that, because I think that's clearly a mistake," Fisher said.

In the future, the lieutenant governor said, no one under his supervision will buy any furniture without the closest scrutiny possible.

"The national economy has impacted Ohio very hard, and so the bottom line is, we have to live within our means and we have to tighten our belt," he said.

"There's no way that I would be authorizing the purchase of any new furniture at this time and, frankly, wouldn't have done it at any time in the last number of months, either."

WBNS-10TV researcher Joel Chow contributed to this story.

paul.aker@10tv.com