CHEYENNE - On the recommendation of the attorney general's office, a "medical furlough" bill will get a new name - medical parole.

The Senate Transportation Committee unanimously approved Senate File 88 Monday evening. It now goes to the floor of the Senate for debate.

The bill gives the governor the option of granting a medical parole when an inmate needs special medical treatment. It also would allow paroles for aging inmates who meet parole board standards.

"It's a tool for early release of people who are at the end of life," Bob Lampert, director of the Department of Corrections, told the committee members.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal asked for the medical parole bill when he had no other option but to commute the sentence of Jeffrey Reichert in June 2007 so the inmate could receive intensive treatment for cancer in Laramie.

Reichert, a Torrington businessman, was convicted of defrauding dozens of farmers of more than $1 million. He pleaded guilty in October 2004 to check fraud and converting to his own use proceeds from the sale of dry beans owned by 59 farmers. Reichert was sentenced to 11 to 19 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution.

Sen. Curt Meier, R-LaGrange, told the committee that victims of the fraud questioned the justice in paroling Reichert when he had so many more years to serve.

Without mentioning Reichert by name, Meier said he had talked to him and the paroled inmate was unsure if the treatment worked.

Lampert said the hospital at Rawlins could not provide the treatment needed for Reichert, and it would have been costly to send officers to the Laramie hospital to guard him.

As for aging, ill inmates, Meier explained that the parole board must request an independent medical evaluation and determine that the inmate will have a place to live and medical care and expenses if given a medical parole. Most of these inmates, he said, will be eligible for the Medicaid program.

"The Board of Parole has to determine that you're not just kicking them out next to the Greyhound bus station," Meier said.