Franklin County commissioners have adopted a “take no prisoners” approach to getting their jail back.
Euphemistically, of course.
They actually want to take prisoners, to restore the Franklin County Detention Center to a full-service jail. In fact, they’ve begged the Department of Corrections to let them do that. But, after the DOC voted 5-2 last week against allowing the county to restore the current 72-hour holding facility to a full service jail, the commissioners struck back.
On Tuesday, Commissioners Fred Hardy, Gary McGrane and Clyde Barker — with the full support of Sheriff Scott Nichols Sr. — voted unanimously to withhold the county’s first payment to the DOC for 2013-14, and won’t write a check until they see the state’s task force report on the struggling unified jail system.
That Blue Ribbon Commission report is supposed to be released in early December.
We salute the trio of commissioners for their Jeffersonian stand. A little rebellion now and then is, as Thomas Jefferson once said to James Madison, “a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
A measure of rebellion is, Jefferson said, “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
Hear. Hear.
That’s not to say we would support withholding payments for every little thing a person disagrees with state government about, but in this case these commissioners — backed by county residents, county police and county lawmakers — have spent months going through official channels, using public hearings and meetings to steadfastly make their documented case that the unified jail system is too costly for taxpayers to bear. And, despite these pleas of reason, the DOC has not satisfactorily answered.
In fact, the DOC is stubbornly clinging to the state’s unified county jail system, which forced consolidation of the county jails with the state prison system in July 2009.
We’ve said before, as have hundreds of others, that this experiment in consolidation just isn’t working. It’s too unwieldy and too expensive, and has turned county officers into chauffeurs.
Pre-2009, defendants arrested in Franklin County and inmates sentenced to less than a year in jail would remain in Franklin County. Now, the facility is considered a detention center. The law doesn’t allow inmates to stay longer than 72 hours in such holding facilities, which means officers must move inmates to other jails that have open beds. Somerset County — the closest jail option to Franklin County — mounted its own little rebellion last March for other reasons and stopped taking Franklin County’s inmates, which means Franklin’s officers are now driving farther to transport inmates to Wiscasset and elsewhere.
And, whenever an inmate has a court date, Franklin County officers have to retrieve them and later return them to these faraway locations.
According to Franklin County jail manager Doug Blauvelt, the county is now paying more than $100,000 in transportation costs, with officers each traveling an average of 500 miles per week, which equates to more than a full day’s shift in shuttle service each week.
Pre-consolidation, transportation costs were minimal since inmates would walk to the district and superior courts for scheduled appearances, and officers weren’t paid to chauffeur. Now, they’re often paid overtime to keep up with demanding court schedules.
It gets worse.
Even though counties with holding facilities have been faithfully giving the DOC some of their taxpayers’ money to help pay for the consolidated jail system since 2009, the state is 75 percent short of the funding necessary to run our jails for the third and fourth quarters of the current year.
On Jan. 1, jails across the state are preparing to lay off staff and to release nonviolent inmates before they complete their sentences because there just isn’t enough money to support the jails’ operations.
So, while consolidation was supposed to save money and create efficiencies, we are now paying more for a less efficient system.
That’s a wacky reality worthy of a little rebellion.
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
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