AUGUSTA – County officials outlined their proposal Wednesday for a Maine Jail and Community Corrections Authority, but members of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee are concerned about its cost and the plan as written faces a likely veto should it be approved.

“Where’s the beef?” Rep. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, the House chairman of the committee, said after Waldo County Sheriff Scott Storey and Kennebec County Commissioner George Jabar met with the panel.

“I don’t see any savings here,” Gerzofsky said. “What I see are additional costs to the taxpayers of something like $16 million.”

The county draft plan would create a new Maine Jail and Community Corrections Authority that could assign inmates to any of the 15 county jails. The theory is that it would maximize the use of jail beds and reduce costs. On any particular day, more than 400 county jail beds are unused.

“Our plan takes some of the same goals that the state has set forth in their plan,” Storey said. “It will provide property tax relief, improve the efficiency of the corrections system, improve the services in the jails and assist the state in addressing their overcrowding problems.”

Under the plan, the counties would pay for the maintenance and operation of the jails, and set the budgets for them. The plan also anticipates that the state Department of Health and Human Services would fund mental health services in the jails.

The new authority would cost about $1.5 million a year to coordinate use of the county jails, as well as an additional million dollars in startup expenses. But the plan faces a significant roadblock in the opposition of Gov. John Baldacci.

“That isn’t going to happen,” he said last week in an interview. “As long as I am here, we are not going to spend money on building up an administration and a new jail authority when I am cutting so many administrations and restructuring.”

Baldacci said he is willing to work with the counties to improve his plan to consolidate corrections. But he said he will not support plans that cost taxpayers more money instead of saving money, as he insists his plan would.

Panel members questioned Storey and Jabar about the plan’s section calling for “noncounty funding sources” of $10.25 million a year to pay for debt service on existing county jail debt.

“We are asking [that] the state pay that,” Storey responded.

In addition, the county plan wants the annual $5.5 million subsidy to the county jails to continue and be funneled through the new authority. Under the draft state plan that was discussed by the committee last week, that fund would be folded into the Corrections Department budget for facilities.

The draft state plan projects $7 million in savings as some jails are downsized to 72-hour holding facilities and others are developed into specialized facilities for dealing with inmates with mental health problems.

Both plans call for an improved coordination of the transportation of inmates between facilities as well as to court or for medical treatment.

The Department of Corrections plan also generated several questions from committee members.

They want more detailed explanations of both proposals and supporting documents to be available at the public hearing on the two measures scheduled for Jan. 28.

“We will have hours and hours of work sessions on this,” Gerzofsky said, “and we will put together a better bill.”

He said a corrections consolidation plan should have savings both in the short and the long term, as well as provide improvements to the overall corrections system. He said both plans have many unanswered questions.

“There are problems, I think, with both plans,” said Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, the committee’s co-chairman. “No doubt we are going to come up with a committee plan, which will take pieces of both the governor’s [bill] and the county, but I do not envision the committee endorsing either of those plans in their totality. We will be coming up with our own plan.”