Jails crisis eased only through cooperation

One year ago, the Maine Department of Corrections faced a significant prison bed shortage with corrections officers working repeated overtime shifts and stepping over inmates sleeping on floors. DOC received one-time emergency funding to “rent” county-jail beds and take other measures, and it was told to fix the problem without more money from the Legislature. With significant help from county jails, DOC’s crisis has eased considerably.

One can speculate about the reasons for the state’s crisis – inaccurate forecasts of inmate populations, lack of adequate funding, poor planning. But while this crisis was developing, the county jail system forecasted its future bed space needs, planned well, and now has enough jail bed capacity to meet county needs until at least 2013, as well as continue to make beds available to DOC.

In an attempt to solve the state’s problems and capitalize on the counties’ good planning, Gov. John Baldacci proposed a state takeover of the jails last year. The plan promised enormous cost savings into the next decade and improved system efficiencies. According to the governor, the plan would save $7 million the first year and $38 million by 2015. However, these “savings” are not reductions in spending, but “avoided future costs” based on questionable estimates about the future cost of running the jails without a state takeover.

For example, DOC projects county jail costs rising at 9 percent per year indefinitely. However, the actual increase was less than 3 percent last year. These “savings” also assume that several counties will construct new jails, even though the counties’ own projections show no need for them, a sort of budgetary “straw man.”

The “savings” are achieved largely by closing jails – first four, and now five, and diverting to the state the property tax funds that support them. It sets up an annual income stream from property taxpayers to the state of roughly $70 million a year, in what amounts to reverse revenue sharing. What started out as a need for inmate beds has now become an exercise in helping balance the state’s budget.

Even with the assumption the state’s forecasts are credible, they still show the cost of running the jails increasing by $38 million in the coming years. Can we seriously expect the state to absorb all future increases in both jail and prison costs, while struggling to close an increasingly large budget deficit of nearly $100 million?

The state’s plan is what was feared all along – another example of big government getting bigger, slower and more expensive. It places enormous hardship on county resources with hidden costs, that will increase property taxes. The implications are especially bleak for Somerset County, which recently issued $35 million in bonds to build a new jail slated to open in October. If that jail is taken over, the state will own and operate the jail, leaving property taxpayers to foot the bill for operations and debt service. This is like having to pay a mortgage on a house you no longer own and in which you cannot live and being thrown into bankruptcy through no fault of your own without recourse.

Although the impact is arguably most severe in Somerset, Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties are facing a similar situation with Two Bridges Regional Jail, as are Cumberland and York with relatively new jails and substantial debt service.

The state’s plan allows for the conversion of five jails slated for closing – in Franklin, Waldo, Piscataquis, Oxford and Kennebec counties – into 72-hour holding facilities in a partial response to concerns about increased inmate transportation costs. But counties exercising this option would be responsible operating these facilities with only an inadequate daily stipend from the state, and the burden of transporting inmates to facilities in neighboring counties after their first 72 hours in custody is shifted squarely onto the shoulders of local law enforcement. This will result in a tremendous increase in uncompensated travel expense, miles driven and staff hours.

Every additional hour a law enforcement officer spends transporting an inmate to another county is one less hour spent protecting us on patrol. Further, the closure and conversion of these five jails places additional hardship on family visits with inmates, on defense lawyers’ access to their clients, and in providing community-based services, none of which bodes well for reducing the number of repeat offenders. Converting five facilities to 72-hour holding facilities at the counties’ expense serves no one except state government’s budget needs.

County government understands and appreciates the governor’s call for improvement. That’s why we’ve put forward a proposal to establish a jail authority that halts the need for further construction, manages bed space that will meet the state’s needs, reduces transportation costs and implements major recommendations of a two-year study commission funded by the state and the counties to reduce recidivism and long-term correctional costs.

The immediate state corrections crisis can best be addressed through a collaborative county and state effort. Let us continue and expand that approach.

George M. Jabar II Esq. is a Kennebec County commissioner and president of the Maine County Commissioners Association. The Rev. Robert T. Carlson is a member of the County Commissioners and Sheriffs Corrections Task Force.