AUGUSTA — Lawmakers on Monday said they want more details on a bill that dissolves the state’s Board of Corrections and returns control of county jails to county governments.
The bill, LD 186, being offered by state Sen. Paul Davis, R-Sangerville, would see the state continue to fund the 15 county jails to the tune of about $12.2 million a year but eliminate a system of shared governance that many, including Gov. Paul LePage, have said hasn’t worked since it was put in place in 2007.
In all, jails cost about $80 million to operate in 2014 with the counties paying about $62 million of that based on a 2008 law that capped what counties could collect from property taxes to pay for jails — with the state picking up the difference.
“Jails were successfully run by the counties for 188 years, before the law was changed,” Davis said. “And quite frankly, we’ve had nothing but problems since the change was implemented.”
Davis’ bill is before the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, which will work to refine the proposal and possibly make a recommendation on it to the full Legislature later this week.
Among the provisions in the bill lawmakers want more information on is one that would provide state funding to county jails based on a competitive grant system instead of a need-based formula.
In 2014, state lawmakers overturned LePage’s veto of a bill that gave the Board of Corrections more authority to make changes within jails and reduced the number of members. The changes also gave the governor the ability to control the majority of the appointments to the new five-member panel. After the veto override, LePage has refused to appoint members to the board, leaving it without a quorum and unable to conduct business under state law. Both of the board’s paid employees resigned earlier this year.
LePage previously said jails need to be run and funded by either state or county government but not both.
“The governor believes that the Board of Corrections system has been a failure and needs to be abolished,” wrote Hank Fenton, an attorney in LePage’s office who presented written statements to the committee Monday. “When it comes to which entity should have this control, the governor does not have a preference.”
Fenton went said LePage also firmly believes “whichever entity comes to control the jails, that same entity and no other, should have the responsibility for funding the jails as soon as the control shifts.”
Changes under the Board of Corrections, including making jails in Oxford and Franklin counties to 72-hour holding facilities, were controversial and costly.
As it disbanded, the Board of Corrections reached out to the Legislature for additional funding for county jails which are facing collective budget shortfalls estimated to be nearly $10 million over the next two years.
Those shortfalls are the result of a combination of financial problems, including a reduction in the number of federal prisoners Maine jails are housing and collecting federal funding for. They are also seeing ongoing increases in inmate medical costs as well as the increasing costs of housing inmates with mental illness.
Earlier this year, lawmakers approved $2.5 million in emergency funding for jails that allowed them to stay in operation under the direction of the state’s Department of Corrections until June 30.
In February, Androscoggin County’s commissioners made clear they had little interest in retaking control of their jail if the state did not continue to help fund it.
The state provides about $2 million to help fund the jail.
Androscoggin County was one of the jails facing a funding shortfall in 2015 and county commissioners worry local taxpayers will be left picking up the complete costs of housing inmates. The state first started to help counties cover the costs of inmates when state law changed to allow those sentenced to less than nine months in prison to serve their time at a county jail.
Since then, other changes, including a push to release mental health patients from state institutions and integrate them into the community, have put additional pressures on county jails, sheriffs testified Monday.
Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry, chairman of the now-defunct Board of Corrections and president of the Maine Sheriffs’ Association, said the association supports returning full control of the jails to the counties.
“Many inmates have serious medical issues that have gone untreated, sometimes for years,” Merry said Monday. “These afflictions and their treatment through medical procedures and medications drive the cost of operating a jail like nothing else.”
Merry said commercial medical insurance as well as Medicaid and Medicare benefits are suspended when a person is serving time, leaving the jails to pick up the costs of health care for inmates.
“These are truly unpredictable from year to year and that makes it hard to properly budget for them,” Merry said. He said county jails had to follow all the state’s rules and regulations or risk losing their occupancy licenses from the state. He said county jails were happy to abide by those rules and did so.
But Merry said the current system under the Board of Corrections created a “dysfunctional financial process.”
“The BOC model does not provide either the state or the counties with direct control over budgeting and expenditures,” Merry said. “This bifurcated process has created a recipe for confusion, distrust and dysfunction from the perspective of both the state and the counties.”
Merry and others said the state’s move to consolidate state and county corrections systems was “admirable” but “the experiment has failed and it is time to put the counties back in the driver’s seat.”
Other supporters of the switch back to county control said the efforts at consolidation didn’t work well in a vastly rural state like Maine, where needs could vary dramatically from county to county.
“Consolidation is an urban formula for a rural state,” state Rep. Will Tuell, R-East Machias, said. Tuell said at least one sheriff told him to, “Blow this jail consolidation law up.”
But others, including some committee members, were not so sure the state should provide counties with funding without oversight.
Some, including the Maine Municipal Association, also questioned whether Davis’ bill would simply lead to pushing even more jail costs to local property taxpayers, especially if LePage stuck to his position that whichever entity controls the jails should also pay for them.
Davis had said his measure seeks to create a soft-landing for counties as they transition back to full control of the jails with some state funding.
But Garrett Corbin, a lobbyist for the Maine Municipal Association, said cities and towns were increasingly skeptical that the state would be able to keep its promises to municipalities.
Corbin said that for the state to instigate, “a big, systemic change and then, only a short number of years later, go back on that; it raises some serious questions.”
Meanwhile, Cecil Munson, an Augusta city councilor, said under the proposal taxpayers in Augusta would have to raise an additional $360,000 a year to help finance the Kennebec County Correctional Facility.
Munson said it seemed particularly unfair when the county facility was often tasked to deal with state prisoners who were charged with crimes while being treated at Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta.
“It makes sense to us that corrections is a state issue and the state should be taking the lead in oversight and the funding of all jails in order to have some uniformity in the budgetary process rather than leaving it to the counties and municipalities to fend for themselves,” Munson said.
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