For new jail deal, Villines wants cities to pay more

Inmates walk around the exercise yard recently at the Pulaski County jail in Little Rock. The county judge and the mayors of the cities that contribute to the jail’s budget are in talks on how to proceed after their funding pact expires Aug. 1.
Inmates walk around the exercise yard recently at the Pulaski County jail in Little Rock. The county judge and the mayors of the cities that contribute to the jail’s budget are in talks on how to proceed after their funding pact expires Aug. 1.

Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines wants each of the county's seven cities to pay 5 percent more next year to help run the county jail as part of a new five-year intergovernmental contract.

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Contributions to the jail pie chart

For Little Rock, that would mean paying more than $300,000 over five years, on top of the $1.76 million it pays now.

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola says he doesn't want his city to pay more to house inmates. He would rather extend the current "interlocal agreement" that funds the jail and wait until a new county judge takes office next year before embarking on a new funding formula.

The current jail funding contract, in place since 1994, expires Aug. 1, and Villines, Stodola and the other mayors have been negotiating a new deal for months without reaching agreement.

The 1994 contract set fixed payments from the cities based on population. As a result, the county has shouldered more and more of the costs of operating the 1,210-bed jail. It now eats up 40 percent of the county's budget.

The negotiations are taking place against a backdrop of continued overcrowding in the 1,210-bed jail, crowding caused mostly by a backlog of state prisoners who can't be transferred because of crowding at state facilities.

Sheriff Doc Holladay closed the jail for a month and a half this spring to most nonviolent offenders, reopening it on June 9.

A 160-bed jail expansion remains unstaffed because of lack of funds.

Villines is pushing a new agreement that calls for the 5 percent increase in payments from the cities in 2015 and annual 3 percent increases thereafter for inflation.

"I feel we must have the 3 percent," Villines said.

That would mean a total increase of about $525,000 from the cities during the next five years.

The jail costs about $25 million annually to operate. This year, cities wrote checks for a combined $2.9 million to cover their share. The county paid $22 million.

Other ideas

Stodola supports extending the current funding pact for another year, noting that there will be a new county judge next year. Villines isn't seeking re-election.

The Little Rock mayor also thinks the county's contract with the U.S. Marshals Service to hold 80 federal prisoners in the constantly crowded jail is taking up space that could be used for local prisoners.

"I understand and appreciate that the county needs more money," Stodola said. "I'm not sure the cities is where they need to get the money from."

But other mayors aren't as put off by a new contract, and they hope to settle on an agreement by the end of the summer -- before the fall budgeting season -- and before a new county judge and any other newly elected officials take over in January.

Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson, who said he hasn't ruled out agreeing to Villines' proposal, has suggested charging each city by the number of inmates held for its district court, which doesn't try felony cases. All felony cases are bound over from district courts and heard in circuit courts, which puts them under county jurisdiction.

Watson and Stodola are looking into the cost of that approach for their cities.

Stodola has said he wants to have a meeting with the mayors, Villines and district court judges in the county to determine what the county needs to do before proceeding with a new agreement.

If no agreement is reached, Villines said the county will charge each city for each person held in the jail based on the agency that arrested the inmate.

As per a judge's order in a 1989 lawsuit against Pulaski County, someone is a county inmate if arrested by the sheriff's office and bound over to circuit court. Also under that order, someone is a city inmate if arrested by city police and not bound over to circuit court.

While North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith called Villines' contract proposal "fair," he's not sure about the logistics of implementing Watson's proposal. Smith said he's open to exploring more options before signing an agreement.

"This is something we've got to get done," said Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher, who isn't decided on which funding method to pursue.

Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman said a new agreement should be palatable to Little Rock, as the largest city contributor.

Other funding

Association of Arkansas Counties Director Chris Villines -- who is no immediate relation to Buddy Villines -- said many counties that don't have dedicated sales taxes or interlocal agreements simply fund their jails through county general fund revenue.

Craighead County has a three-year contract with Jonesboro for $151,000 per month -- or about $1.8 million of the $4.5 million per year jail budget. The county bills other cities per inmate held in the 381-person capacity jail before they go through the court system.

Washington County funds its 710-bed jail through a quarter-cent sales tax and has added county general fund money when the sales tax isn't enough. It does not receive money from cities.

In Pulaski County, voters have twice rejected a sales tax for the jail since 1994. And none of the funding proposals on the table would provide an extra $2 million for staffing for 160 jail-expansion beds going unused.

In 2011, the county spent $3.85 million in public safety reserve funds to build the 240-bed expansion, without contributions from cities, in response to a study that projected the county would need more beds.

In 2012, cities and the county agreed to fund staffing for 80 of those beds but have not agreed on funding for the remainder.

"At this point, I'm not even considering the possibility that they will be opened this year," Holladay said, noting that officials had to get through the interlocal agreement negotiations first.

State prisoners

About 2,500 people held for the state prison system are backed up in county jails statewide because an already overcrowded Department of Correction can't take them.

In Pulaski County, the number of state inmates who might regularly be occupying space in the jail has jumped from between 200 and 300 to as many as 500 on any given day.

"If you took out the state prisoners today, we'd have enough room," Buddy Villines told the Quorum Court in May.

Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman Shea Wilson said the department is removing inmates from the jails and placing them in state facilities as fast as it can.

Wilson said the department has been invoking the Emergency Powers Act, which releases inmates within 90 days of being parole-eligible with approval; identifying inmates eligible for the expanded Boot Camp program; opening up more beds in existing facilities; and renovating old facilities to take inmates in the future.

Getting state inmates out of county jails is going to take several small efforts, Department of Community Correction spokesman Dina Tyler said. While state officials predicted the consequences of mass parole revocations across the state to be temporary, Tyler said things have not resolved as quickly as expected and that the state will need to work with legislators in the spring to find some solutions.

"We had hoped that after the first of the year that a lot of those who have been revoked would start to go home, and some of them are, but none of that is going as fast as we thought," Tyler said.

Meanwhile, local leaders are waiting out the issue.

"They simply have not figured out yet how to fix their own problem, and it's affecting county jails across the state," Holladay said.

On the morning of June 20, for example, the jail had 1,237 inmates -- 27 inmates overcapacity just 11 days after reopening. Holladay said he'll consider "closing" the jail to new offenders again if the population totals start pushing 1,300.

"I certainly expect the numbers to go up," he said.

The inmate crunch has cost thousands of extra dollars in overtime hours for jail staff members who must come in when pod populations rise over the maximum number of inmates allowed per officer.

During a three-month period this year before the jail "closed," the sheriff's office spent $25,604 more in overtime costs -- $170,435 -- than during a similar three-month period in 2013, before the state's revised parole policies.

Holladay said he could end up having to go to the Quorum Court to ask for more money to pay officers.

"It's quite possible we will exceed our overtime budget for this year in an effort to maintain the facility," he said.

Set by the Legislature in 2001, the state pays jails $28 per day for holding an inmate, but the Association of Arkansas Counties and state legislative audit have for years determined that the actual cost of holding an inmate is higher than that amount. Last year, the groups reported the actual cost was double -- about $56 per day, statewide.

"If they're going to fill our beds, we need to at least be breaking even," Smith said.

Holladay is also concerned that his jail may fall out of compliance with a federal order from 2000, which he said removed the jail from federal oversight under the conditions that the county maintain an adequate and adequately staffed jail.

The Arkansas Sheriffs' Association has asked the governor and lawmakers to call a special legislative session to deal with the backlog of state inmates at county jails across the state.

Scott Perkins, spokesman for the Association of Arkansas Counties, said the association also plans to lobby for higher reimbursement rates and whatever it can get to alleviate the financial burden on county jails.

"We are at a critical situation in county jails," he said. "It certainly is a crisis."

The association lobbied for $7 million extra in reimbursements to county jails for housing state inmates earlier this year. Legislators gave $3.7 million to jails through state surplus money.

"The problem is this is more of a central Arkansas problem, and other parts of the state don't see the emergency of it," Fletcher said. "But it is a problem that's got to be dealt with.

"There's got to be a lot of people at the table to address a long-term solution rather than just kicking the can down the road year after year," he added.

SundayMonday on 06/22/2014

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