In its final report issued June 11, the accounting and consulting firm RHR Smith & Company outlined issues plaguing the Maine Board of Corrections. In a 27-page document not including the financial detail, the accountants evaluated the accuracy and effectiveness of the BOC’s financial accounting system.
One of RHR Smith’s criticisms of the BOC was the high level of unfunded liabilities. As of June 30, 2011, the unfunded liabilities, such as accrued vacation pay, sick pay, retirement, and other benefits amounted to over $2.5 million, according to RHR Smith’s report.
RHR is not the first organization to notice that the Maine’s prison expenditures are higher than what is budgeted. The Vera Institute of Justice (www.vera.org), a nonprofit group funded by the Pew Research Foundation also found that in fiscal year 2010, “the Maine Department of Corrections had $124.8 million in prison expenditures, but also had $8.1 million in prison-related costs outside the department’s budget.”
“It costs us $80 million to run the prisons, and the tax cap is set at 61.5 million,” said Two Bridges Regional Jail Administrator Mark Westrum. “That leaves about $19 million we have to find.”
Because 67 percent of the costs are for personnel, RHR Smith reports that cutting back on costs might entail cutting positions, if necessary.
In addition to not having enough money, the money that is available is not managed well, according to the RHR Smith report. According to the report, there is no process in place to monitor and report all activity in the BOC’s investment fund. As a result, the directive to deposit special revenue funds into it was not relayed to the Maine State Treasurer, which resulted in an estimated loss in revenue of over $100,000.