Lincoln County officials, in interviews, documents and public remarks, continued a scathing criticism of the Board of Corrections, the Dept. of Corrections (DOC) and the state-run correctional system this week.
Lincoln County currently pays over $100,000 to house an inmate for a year, Lincoln County Administrator John O’Connell said in a Dec. 20 interview.
Including debt service, Lincoln County will spend $3,810,939 on the jail in 2011 – about 36.92 percent of the county budget. Twenty-four Lincoln County prisoners were at the jail Dec. 20. Although 24 is an unusually low count, if a similar average persists throughout 2011, Lincoln County will spend $158,789.13 – $435.04 per day – on each local prisoner.
The Two Bridges Regional Jail budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, not including debt service, is $7,031,165. Lincoln County will pay $2,799,476, about 40 percent of the total budget and 58 percent of the Lincoln/Sagadahoc (the “operating members”) portion of the budget.
Only Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties pay for the debt service, which will amount to $36,279,550 over the lifetime of the $24.6 million loan.
The Lincoln-Sagadahoc inequality, particularly, has been a source of frustration for Lincoln County officials. Lincoln County, with 24 inmates to Sagadahoc’s 52 as of Dec. 20, currently pays 58 percent of the operating members’ share of the Two Bridges Regional Jail budget.
Lincoln County filed a lawsuit against Sagadahoc County on Oct. 26, 2009, in an attempt to enforce the terms of a 2005 cost-sharing agreement between the counties. “We are waiting for the ruling from the Superior Court,” O’Connell said Dec. 20.
The cost-sharing agreement determines each county’s contribution according to a formula “based upon the number of Prisoners actually committed…”
Sagadahoc County and the Board of Directors of the Lincoln and Sagadahoc Multicounty Jail Authority maintain that a 2007 bill, officially titled An Act To Better Coordinate and Reduce the Cost of the Delivery of State and County Correctional Services, supersedes the cost-sharing agreement.
The legislation, also known as Public Law 653 or the jail cap, locks in county contributions to the jail at their 2007-2008 level.
District 53 Rep. Les Fossel (R-Alna) recently agreed to sponsor legislation to repeal the bill.
“The consensus” among the Lincoln County legislative delegation “has been that this is not saving the state any money,” Fossel said Dec. 21. “It was a poor decision on the part of the Baldacci administration and the people who passed the bill.”
Exacerbating these issues, Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties pay a disproportionately large percentage of incarceration costs for Waldo County and DOC inmates. DOC pays Two Bridges Regional Jail $22.96 per day to house state inmates.
According to a Dec. 14 letter from O’Connell to the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners, the state pays “approximately $100 per day” – four times what they pay Two Bridges – to house inmates at the Maine State Prison.
According to O’Connell, Waldo County pays the state to house their prisoners. The state, in turn, sends Waldo County prisoners to Two Bridges Regional Jail – again, for $22.96 per day – and pockets any difference.
According to the Waldo County website, the Waldo County Correctional Center, as a result of a “mission change” maintains a 72-hour holding facility and is the home of the Maine Coastal Regional Reentry Center, a program that seeks to “successfully integrate” inmates back into the general public and provide “intensive treatment designed to reduce recidivism rates.”
Waldo County transfers prisoners requiring a stay in excess of 72 hours to Two Bridges Regional Jail.
“They took our jail and made it into a dormitory,” Waldo County Treasurer David Parkman said Dec. 21. Now, without a full-service jail, Waldo County still contributes the same amount – about $2.8 million – under the terms of the jail cap.
According to Parkman, the state allows Waldo County to keep whatever is necessary to run the holding facility and the reentry center. The county submits the balance – about $919,000 this year – to the state. The state, in turn, houses long-term Waldo County inmates at Two Bridges Regional Jail for $22.96 per day.
“You can’t eat on that, let alone the bed,” Parkman said. At times, Waldo County inmates at Two Bridges Regional Jail have outnumbered Lincoln and Sagadahoc inmates.
“If the average person knew how this system was run, they’d be appalled,” Parkman said. “This whole system – it’s all built on toothpicks and it’s ready to go.”
“If [Two Bridges Regional Jail] fail[s] down there, we’re in big trouble up here because we have no jail,” Parkman said. “This is not a consolidation of jails, this is a consolidation of power at the state level.”
“Sixty percent of the [inmates] at Two Bridges come from outside Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties,” Lincoln County Commissioner Bill Blodgett said at a Dec. 16 meeting of the South Bristol Board of Selectmen. “[The state] still [has] empty beds [at the Maine State Prison] in Warren but it’s cheaper for them to send their inmates to Two Bridges.”
The Dept. of Corrections (DOC) chooses to leave an entire, 60-bed pod vacant at the Warren facility, O’Connell said, due in part to maintenance, staffing and morale problems.
DOC Deputy Commissioner Denise Lord confirmed the vacancy of the pod. “We lost 18 positions at the Maine State Prison” due to recent budget cuts, Lord said. “We gave up 30 positions department-wide.”
Lord, however, said the Board of Corrections (BOC) – a separate entity from the Dept. of Corrections – funds “every single county jail… at what they need to run the jail at a certain [average daily population],”
“Every jail is 100 percent funded through the Board of Corrections,” Lord said. “I’m not sure what Mr. O’Connell is referring to.”
O’Connell, however, isn’t the only official calling for reformation. The entire Lincoln County Board of Commissioners (Blodgett’s fellows, Lynn Orne and Sheridan Bond, have spoken forcefully and publicly in favor of repeal), Fossel and municipal officials have decried the failings of the current system.
Robert S. Howe, the Executive Director of the Maine County Commissioners Association, made a call for reform in a Nov. 16 paper recounting the history of the Board of Corrections.
“The BOC must now take a closer look at the Department of Corrections – its budget, its mission and its facilities,” Howe wrote.
“Failure to do that will reinforce the growing believe [sic] that county jails are being cannibalized in order [to] serve the needs of the state,” Howe wrote. “County officials, including many who were initially enthusiastic supporters of the Board of Corrections, are becoming increasingly concerned that a proverbial train wreck lies ahead.”
