Washington, D.C. -- Bob Ney was a powerful man in a city full of powerful people.

The former Ohio congressman and former chairman of the Committee on House Administration was once known as the "Mayor of Capitol Hill."

Ney, 52, had two posh Capitol Hill offices, a large staff of aides, a million-dollar office budget and a six-figure salary.

The longtime Republican spent many of his evenings attending swanky fundraising dinners. Other evenings were spent in the basement-level watering hole of the ritzy Capitol Hill Club, sharing high-priced meals and stories with fellow GOP powerbrokers. Thursday Ney's life will change dramatically.

Ney is scheduled to surrender himself to the federal penitentiary in Morgantown, W. Va., on March 1 at 2 p.m. to begin serving a 30-month sentence for his role in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

He pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges for trading official congressional actions for gifts and money.

The Morgantown prison is a minimum-security facility. There are no barbed-wire fences and no lookout towers manned by sharpshooters. Its public information officer said the prison has no history of riots, violent fights or violent offenders. But life inside the Morgantown Federal Prison bears no resemblance to Ney's experience in Washington, D.C., where he served for 12 years as representative of Ohio's 18th Congressional District.

Morgantown's prison is home to convicts considered to be "low flight risks." Prison spokeswoman Veronica Fernandez said the facility holds 1,300 inmates in "seven separate housing units."

Fernandez said Ney will be housed in a "dorm-style" room, with bunk beds for 12 inmates. Those rooms also include a desk, a chair, and a "small amount of floor space," she said.

Ney, like all other inmates, will also be given an individual locker to hold his personal items.

Ney, who once made headlines for changing the name of the french fries served inside the U.S. Capitol complex to "freedom fries" at the outset of the Iraq war, will be offered three meals a day in the prison cafeteria.

Lunches and dinners include a salad bar, with "both hot and cold food items," Fernandez said. Fellow inmates will serve the food, which he'll eat while seated at a four-person table inside the cafeteria.

All Morgantown inmates are required to work seven and a half hours each day within the facility. Inmates are assigned to one of several work details, including food service, custodial work, landscaping, or education services.

"If they have an interest, they can request a certain assignment," Fernandez said. "But the needs of the institution comes first, so we don't always honor those requests."

Ney will earn money for that work. But the pay scale for this work is a far cry from his approximately $160,000-a-year congressional salary. The prison's pay rate ranges from 12 cents an hour to 40 cents an hour.

Ney, who has admitted to being an alcoholic, will spend half of his designated work hours participating in the prison's substance-abuse program, prison officials said. Prison counselors will meet with Ney five days a week for six months.

Ney has refused to comment publicly about his alcohol addiction. A NEWS9 reporter asked the former congressman about his condition, shortly after he was formally sentenced to prison on Jan. 19. Ney didn't respond to the question.

In court documents filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Jan. 10, his attorneys said Ney had participated in "inpatient and extensive outpatient treatment for his alcohol addiction and continues to participate in regular treatment sessions."

His attorneys and federal prosecutors agreed to jointly recommend the Bureau of Prisons place Ney in the Morgantown penitentiary, because it's one of the few federal prisons that offer an in-house substance-abuse program.

As chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Ney once oversaw the Capitol's telecommunications equipment, including the distribution of Blackberry devices and the installation of office computers and the house e-mail system. He won't have such items in prison.

Fernandez said Ney, like all other inmates, will not have access to e-mail or portable telephones. To communicate with his family and friends in Ohio, Ney will be provided with pen and paper to write letters. He can also make collect telephone calls from public phones inside the prison. Ney can also spend his prison earnings on telephone "phone credits," which are redeemable for free phone calls, Fernandez said.

"The inmates have a spending limit of $290 a month," said Fernandez. "The money can also be used to buy telephone credits, stamps, toiletries, soda, and snacks."

The food available in the prison commissary includes a variety of soft drinks, crackers, and canned goods, like tuna fish.

Morgantown is already home to a high-profile inmate. Former television reality-show winner Richard Hatch, who became famous in 2000 on CBS' "Survivor" program, is serving a sentence in Morgantown for tax-related crimes.

Fernandez said Ney, Hatch, and other well-known inmates do not receive special accommodations because of their fame. In a minimum-security prison, like Morgantown, Fernandez said high-profile inmates are not deemed to be "at-risk." Ney will be placed in, what the prison calls, the "general population," immediately upon arrival at the facility.

Ney's 30-month sentence is a stiffer punishment than the 27-month term recommended by prosecutors. Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, who ordered the sentence, said the longer term was warranted because the former congressman's crimes spanned"(four years), a long period of time."

Huvelle filed the formal request with the Bureau of Prisons to place Ney in the Morgantown facility, which is a three-hour drive from his wife and elderly parents' homes in Licking County, Ohio.

Huvelle said Ney would benefit from the substance-abuse rehabilitation offered in Morgantown. Ney's friend, Ellen Ratner, who serves as Washington bureau chief for the Talk Radio News Service, said the former congressman is already beginning to win his battle against alcohol.

Ratner said, "Look, the guy is so grateful to be sober. He says he has really learned the meaning of friends and family from all this."

The former "Mayor of Capitol Hill" will be required to perform 200 hours of community service and pay a $6,000 fine upon his release from prison in September 2009.

Requests to Ney for comment were not returned.

-Scott MacFarlane, NEWS9