JPs vote 13-0 to levy per-inmate daily fee on all cities using jail

Cost lower in county’s contract offer

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Starting today, all municipalities operating a law enforcement agency in Pulaski County are subject to a daily fee for each prisoner they send to the county jail, though the county won't likely charge the fee until next year and then only if a new agreement is not in place to fund the jail.

By a 13-0 vote, the Quorum Court approved an emergency ordinance Tuesday night allowing the county to charge each city $245 for the first day one of its inmates is held in the Pulaski County jail and $44 for each day afterward, until the person posts bail or has their case bound over to circuit court.

District 1 Justice of the Peace Doug Reed, R-Roland, and District 9 Justice of the Peace Wilma Walker, D-College Station, were absent from Tuesday's meeting although Reed was one of 14 sponsors of the ordinance. Walker has not attended a Quorum Court meeting since February because of illness.

County Judge Buddy Villines told the Quorum Court that the ordinance represents the fairest funding mechanism for the jail but that the increased cost to the cities may be too prohibitive for their budgets.

Little Rock, North Little Rock, Jacksonville, Sherwood and Maumelle are under contract with the county to provide $2.9 million of the jail's $25 million annual operating budget. That contract expires Aug. 1, and negotiations over a new contract are ongoing.

Under the ordinance passed Tuesday, the cities would pay about double what they now pay, according to county calculations based on city usage of the jail in 2013.

Villines said the county will not enforce the ordinance if the five cities pay the expiring contract's rate through the end of the year.

Three cities -- Jacksonville, Sherwood and Maumelle -- paid their 2014 appropriations for the jail at the beginning of the year, while Little Rock and North Little Rock are on payment installment schedules.

Pulaski County has three other cities: Alexander, Wrightsville and Cammack Village. Alexander sends most of its inmates to the Saline County jail, and interim Police Chief Derrick Jackson has indicated that the ordinance does not concern him. Wrightsville does not operate its own police force and instead pays the Pulaski County sheriff's office for policing. Cammack Village, a city of 768 tucked between Little Rock and the Arkansas River, has a small police force.

Villines said three of the five cities already plan to send a proposed new contract to their governing boards.

The new contract calls for an immediate 5 percent increase in payments to the county for 2015 and for an inflation adjustment based on the Consumer Price Index for each year after that through 2019.

Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher attended Tuesday's meeting to explain to the Quorum Court why he's not yet on board with the proposal.

Fletcher noted that Jacksonville, which had about 29,000 people in 1990, has seen its population shrink about 1,000 but is still paying the third-largest sum for the jail while being only the fourth-largest city in the county.

The original payments in the current contract were determined in 1990 and were based on the amount each city was paying to operate its own city jail.

Villines emphasized that population does not play a role in the payments.

"The fairest way to get cities to do this is per diem," Villines said. "You may have a large city that has a low crime rate."

Fletcher noted that his city's finances depend on population.

"Sixty-three percent of my budget is based on population because of sales tax," he said.

District 15 Justice of the Peace Shane Stacks, R-North Little Rock, said he understood Fletcher's argument but noted that county and city officials have been aware of the contract's looming expiration for a while.

"I feel your pain, I really do," Stacks told Fletcher. "In general, we've all known this was coming in the past year or two and ... now we're cramming overnight."

Fletcher tied the issues to the problem of the state reimbursing the county for holding inmates at a lower rate than the actual cost of holding them. The state pays $28 per inmate per day, $16 less than the county says it costs.

"It's just a bad situation that keeps getting worse," he said.

Metro on 07/23/2014