Pulaski County and state officials are working on a one-year contract that would lease an unused satellite building at the county jail to the state for $1 and open at least 200 beds in an effort to help alleviate county jails of the 2,249 state prison inmates crowding them.

While the county would not profit much from the lease agreement, it would benefit from being relieved of holding 125 state inmates in the jail as soon as July 21, when the state hopes to start operating the jail's work center building. The remaining beds would be filled by state inmates held in other county jails statewide.

The Pulaski County jail is now "closed" -- meaning it is not accepting most nonviolent, nonfelony offenders -- because of a lack of space to hold inmates. It has been closed since July 1 after a previous 41-day closure because of crowding this spring.

"My goal is to get this jail open, and this is a feasible way of getting that done at no cost to the county or the cities," Sheriff Doc Holladay said Wednesday. The jail could then begin filling its beds with misdemeanor offenders who are going free, he said.

The state plans to spend $3 million during the next year operating and maintaining the building, Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman Shea Wilson said. The state Legislature, during its three-day special session last week, appropriated $6.3 million to the department per year for opening up 604 prison and jail beds to relieve county jails of the same number of state inmates.

The money appropriated did not include funding for a building lease; it only covered staffing and operation costs, Wilson said.

Holladay said he contacted the state before the special session to discuss opening more beds and offered up the work center.

Acting County Attorney Amanda Mitchell said she expects to reach an agreement with the state by the end of the week, but noted that a lease contract has to go through other hands before the attorneys and County Judge Buddy Villines could sign off on it.

The Pulaski County Quorum Court does not need to approve the lease, Mitchell said.

However, the contract must go through the Arkansas Building Authority because it is a lease, Wilson said. Additionally, the state Board of Corrections must approve the contract at its next meeting or through a conference call beforehand. The board's next meeting is July 25. The contract must also be signed by Correction Department Director Ray Hobbs.

The jail work center building that sits across West 31st Street from the jail in Little Rock can hold up to 250 inmates, a level Wilson said the state eventually wants to work toward.

The building is a part of the county jail, but but its use for housing inmates has been unfunded because the county and cities have not agreed to pay more for staffing. It's instead used for the jail's day-work program in which inmates work during the day instead of staying overnight.

The main jail building has 1,120 beds, with jail funding for 1,210. But the building has held more inmates than that for most of 2014 because of a backlog of 400 to 500 state prison inmates occupying jail space each day.

The numbers of state inmates held in the jail more than doubled after state officials made changes to parole policies that eventually led to the arrests of hundreds of parole absconders, many of whom wound up in county jails because of a lack of bed space in state prisons.

Holladay said the county jail will always hold at least 150 to 200 state inmates because of the paperwork done after circuit courts commit people to prison and because of prison crowding.

"We're not ever going to be in a situation in which we're not holding state inmates," he said. "That's just not possible."

Villines said he has not been meeting with attorneys on the contract but that he advised County Comptroller Mike Hutchens to avoid charging the state, if possible.

Mitchell, the county attorney, said the county must charge the state some amount of money for the lease to be considered legal and that the county decided on $1.

"I have no interest at all in charging the state a lot of money," Villines said. "If they get inmates out of our jail, then we're helped. That building is not there for commercial profit."

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola questioned the county's decision to not charge the state more than $1, at a time of tense discussions on what the county and cities can afford in jail operation funding in the coming years.

"They're taking a 250-bed jail facility, and we're giving it to them for a $1?" he said. "That doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

Stodola said the small amount was not financially sound and did not leave the state accountable for square-footage costs of the building, which he said many businesses would charge for in a typical lease agreement. He said the $1 contract constituted another way the state is getting away with not having to pay for what it should.

"Again it's just one more example of the state foisting onto the county ... a problem they haven't dealt with," he said.

Villines said he did not want to discuss profiting from the state or the state's reimbursement rate for holding state inmates in the county jails as a part of the contract.

"People who say that want to point fingers and blame somebody else. ... That's childish," he said. "We're trying to help the state because helping the state helps us."

A section on 07/10/2014