County Judge Buddy Villines said Tuesday that Pulaski County will have to close as many as 100 jail beds if Little Rock and Jacksonville do not agree to jail funding options presented to them for next year.
"If they don't sign on, the county is going to be in a position where it is going to have to close beds because we have no assurance they will pay," Villines said.
While Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola expressed doubt that the issue would boil over, he said the city could decide, among other things, not to voluntarily contribute funds for the 1,210-bed jail.
As Pulaski County and the cities within it are preparing and approving budgets, two cities still have not decided how to address a key 2015 issue: funding the $25.1 million county jail.
Stodola and Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher have argued that the county's proposals -- an interlocal agreement based on 1990 costs for operating city jails and a more expensive per-day rate ordinance -- are neither fair nor advantageous to their cities.
Stodola said he plans to present his city board with four options: taking one of the two county offers, determining and paying what it considers a more accurate per-day rate or not contributing anything.
"I think a scare tactic is not going to change the city's position on the issue," Stodola said.
Stodola noted that counties are constitutionally required to operate jails and the city could decide it's not obligated to contribute anything.
State law allows a county to charge municipalities a per-day rate for holding inmates in the absence of an agreement on payments.
Since the early 1990s, the Pulaski County jail has been the only one operating in the county. After cities sued the county for not adequately paying for the inmates housed in city jails in 1989, the cities and county merged operations into a single jail that opened Aug. 1, 1994. Through an interlocal agreement between the county and the cities of Little Rock, North Little Rock, Jacksonville, Maumelle and Sherwood, funding for the jail was determined in 1990 on the basis of how much each city and the county was paying for its individual jail.
But the jail faced almost immediate crowding and financial woes that have surfaced on and off in the two decades since.
In 2014, the jail has closed three times to most nonviolent, nonfelony offenders for a total of 105 days because of a doubling of state inmates normally housed in it.
Also this year, the county proposed a new agreement -- the first one since 1990.
Under the current agreement, the county will receive $2.9 million from the cities by the end of 2014, the final year. That's $1,766,263 from Little Rock, $759,764 from North Little Rock, $191,496 from Jacksonville, $127,047 from Sherwood, and $48,807 from Maumelle.
The new deal charges the cities 5 percent more beginning next year and subjects them to consumer price index adjustments not to exceed 3 percent for four years after that to make up for 20 years of inflation costs that Villines said the county has shouldered.
The agreement also includes a clause that states the contract may be renegotiated if significant changes are made at the state level that affect the jail. The clause was placed in the agreement after mayors suggested the state might increase its reimbursement rate to counties for holding state inmates in county jails.
Three cities -- North Little Rock, Sherwood and Maumelle -- have signed onto the county's five-year contract.
The Pulaski County Quorum Court has additionally approved an ordinance that would charge each city a per-day rate for holding inmates in lieu of an interlocal agreement with those cities. The fee charges $245 per prisoner for the first day and $44 for each subsequent day.
Villines and some justices of the peace have said the ordinance is the most fair to the county.
The agreement would cost the cities $3 million next year altogether, while the ordinance, if each city opted for it, has been projected to more than double the cities' contribution to $6.3 million.
But Little Rock and Jacksonville have contended for months that the county's proposed interlocal agreement charges each city unequal rates for the number of inmates they actually send to the jail, assuming crime rates remain the same.
When dividing the amount Little Rock paid to the county for the jail in 2013 by the number of people Little Rock police put in the jail that year, the city paid the county $199.13 per inmate.
Using that same formula, which does not factor in the length of stay for each inmate, Maumelle paid $165.48, North Little Rock paid $127.11, Jacksonville paid $119.02 and Sherwood paid $54.79.
Fletcher has based his concern on the amount paid by each city compared with the size of each city. In 1990, Jacksonville was of a similar size as it is now, but Sherwood has grown by more than 50 percent, surpassing Jacksonville, and has not been subject to a new rate based on its population.
"Part of our job is to fix the wrongs, and this is obviously a wrong," said Fletcher, who has appeared before the Quorum Court this year asking to pay $56,000 less next year than the $201,000 he faces, but to no avail.
Fletcher said he might go to the Quorum Court again before it gives a final vote on its 2015 budget later this month.
"It's a problem between the cities," Villines said, referring to the different rates the cities pay. "It's not the county."
Since late this summer, Villines and some justices of the peace have argued that the cities' complaints have come too late in the agreement re-negotiation process that started almost a year ago.
"They had a chance to do something, and they didn't," Villines said.
This summer, Villines said that the ordinance charging a per-day rate was designed to give the county assurance that the jail would be paid for, even if cities chose not to sign onto the agreement. On Tuesday, Villines said he was concerned the ordinance wouldn't be enough.
"If we don't have an agreement by the first of the year, we are going to have to close beds by the first of the year," he said. "That's just a financial reality that has nothing to do with politics."
Together, Little Rock and Jacksonville pay about $2 million to the jail -- about two-thirds of the total city contribution and about 160 jail beds.
Villines, who is retiring at the end of the year, said he would not urge the Quorum Court to spend reserve money to keep the jail open in the worst-case scenario. He said spending reserves on operations is "stupid" and how the county landed in financial trouble in the mid-2000s.
Earlier this month, the Quorum Court budget committee, which comprises all 15 justices of the peace, approved a $65.1 million budget that included $1.5 million in raises for county employees, who had not had raises since 2011. The county is anticipating more than $66 million in revenue next year.
Little Rock and Jacksonville plan to discuss their 2015 budgets in December. Stodola said the decision on jail funding is ultimately up to the city board and believed the differences could be resolved.
"I don't think it's good public policy for the county and cities to get into litigation, if we can avoid it," he added.
But Stodola said he was frustrated with the county because of the lack of jail space, the $1 leasing of the jail's unfunded beds to the state and the contract with the U.S. Marshals Service for 80 spots for federal prisoners.
State law allows the county to accept federal inmates if "space and staffing are available" and if the per-day charge for holding them does not exceed the actual costs, including capital costs, for holding them.
"If they freed up [those] prisoners, I wouldn't have my district judges complaining about how the county is never taking their people to jail," Stodola said.
Stodola said, in the end, he believed the city will do something that benefits residents and public safety, adding that he doesn't think the public "has an appetite to see the cities and county fight over this."
"I think that ultimately we're going to decide to do something that will protect our citizens and that probably the county judge will have nothing to worry about," Stodola said.
A section on 11/12/2014