AUSTIN -- Revelations that the Texas Youth Commission spent more than $1.26 million to lease empty prisons beds has key state lawmakers demanding the contract be canceled.

The agency moved 18 teenage offenders Friday into the new lockup near Houston, which had sat empty for three months despite the state paying more than $22,500 a day to the company hired to run the facility.

The Eagle Lake prison would need to house 119 offenders to cover the costs to taxpayers. The money was paid to Youth Services International for startup costs, something other state agencies prohibit.

The Austin American-Statesman revealed details of the contract this week.

John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, wrote a letter Friday to the agency demanding the contract with Florida-based company be canceled.

The contract “looks like it was written by and for the vendor, without the necessary protections for Texas taxpayers,” wrote Whitmire, a Houston Democrat.

Republican Jerry Madden, the House Corrections Committee chairman, said “we need to get our money back.”

TYC spokesman Jim Hurley said the agency would not provide startup costs in the future. He added that the transfer of offenders into the facility “will not preclude us from moving them someplace else, if a decision is made to do that.”

The contract is the latest trouble for the embattled agency.  Gov. Rick Perry just this week moved TYC out the state conservatorship put in place in 2007 following allegations of inmate sexual abuse and a cover-up by agency officials.