Gov. Sarah Sanders’ quest to build a 3,000-bed prison in Franklin County has been so beset with shifting explanations, tactical missteps and public relations blunders that it’s hard to imagine administration officials could do anything to make matters worse.

Until they did.

In a decision both mystifying and arrogant in equal measure, the governor’s office decided not to send any of her senior staff to defend the prison project at a hearing held last week by the legislature’s Joint Performance Review Committee — including Joe Profiri , the prison guru Sanders brought from Arizona as her first corrections secretary and who parachuted into a role as senior adviser in her office when he was fired by the Board of Corrections.

After opponents of the Franklin County prison spent more than a

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