Mower County could bill state for offender program

Published 10:28 am Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Things have gotten so bad and Mower County officials have grown so frustrated, they are thinking of billing the state of Minnesota for the expenses incurred by cost-shifts in the Short Term Offender Program.

The program — designed to help the state balance it’s budget — requires the Minnesota Department of Corrections to release all prisoners in state facilities with sentences of 180 days or less to their counties of residence to serve out the remainder of their sentences.

It is another cost-shift from the state to county government that is exacting a huge expense upon counties.

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At Tuesday morning’s Mower County Board meeting, administrative specialist Denise Bartels read a letter from the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners.

According to the letter, Olmsted and Winona counties plan to send the state bills for housing Short Term Offender Program prisoners.

If Olmsted County sends the state an invoice for housing the state’s prisoners, it will demand $665,000 in payment.

If Mower County does that, the invoice will read $120,000 due.

Both figures are for expenses incurred through eight months of 2008.

Richard P. Cummings, 1st District county commissioner and chairman of the county board, said the $120,000 figure represents “actual costs” to Mower County to house the state’s prisoners.

Cummings said the Mower County area’s legislators should be informed of those costs, too.

David Hillier, 3rd District county commissioner, said, “The 2008 costs are larger, and they’re going to get even larger in 2009.”

Because sending out an official invoice for payment due would have to appear on the county’s lists of accounts receivable and because the county is nearing the end of its 2009 budget and property tax levy work, the commissioners chose Tuesday to ask county finance director Donna Welsh for advice before sending a memo or a bill to the state.

‘Direct cost’

Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi has no doubts the Short Term Offender Program has created an untenable cost-shift to Mower County.

“This is a direct cost-shift to the county,” Amazi said. “We pay the bill.”

According to the sheriff’s computations — verified by county finance director Donna Welsh and jail administrator Bob Roche — the county was forces to pick up 1,565 prisoner days thus far in 2008.

“It costs us $102 per day to hold a prisoner from the Short Term Offender Program,” said Amazi, pausing for what was to come. “The state reimburses us $25.04 per prisoner per day.”

The cost-shift went into placer in 2005.

Originally, the county was reimbursed $11 per prisoner per day. The current figure is the highest the reimbursement rate has been, but next year, it is slated for fall to just $9 per day, according to the sheriff.

In Mower County’s case, the problem is compounded by another DOC action.

Last November 2007, the county jail was reduced to a 90-day lockup; i.e., only those convicted prisoners with sentences of 90 days or less can occupy the jail’s 40 cells.

Since 2001, when former County Sheriff Barry J. Simonson first exposed the problem to the county commissioners, county officials have been attempting to solve the vexing problem of jail over-crowding.

While county officials have approved building a new 128-bed, two-story, $36-million jail in downtown Austin, Amazi is forced to continue to send prisoners to other counties’ jails for boarding.

“Presently, we send prisoners to the Mitchell County Jail at Osage, Iowa and to the Freeborn County Jail at Albert Lea and the Steele County Jail at Owatonna,” the sheriff said.

While the county jail’s capacity has consistently been reduced from 72 prisoners to the current 40 by the DOC, the original jail over-crowding problems combined with the DOC declaration the jail would only be a 90-day lockup, has turned prisoner transportation into a new service of the Sheriff’s Office.

The county commissioners earlier this year approved hiring more deputies to transport prisoners and a new 13-passenger van to do that.

Failure

Amazi and county coordinator Craig Oscarson went to St. Paul Thursday, Sept. 18, to join sheriff’s and other county officials and staff at a Association of Minnesota Counties-organized protest on the State Capitol steps.

“We laid orange, jail cover-alls on the Capitol steps,” Amazi said.

Governor Pawlenty skipped the demonstration and so did the DOC and most state legislators, leaving only the media to record the occasion.

“The Short Term Offender Program is part of a failed relationship with the state of Minnesota,” said Oscarson upon his return to Mower County.

A failed relationship that has shifted prisoner costs to a county facing its own financial challenges, including the $36-million jail and justice center project.

Amazi said there is one more negative impact of the state’s Short Term Offender Program in Mower County: With so few jail beds for any prisoners, not everyone convicted in court and sentenced to jail actually serves time behind bars.

“We have people on the streets wearing ankle bracelets or sentenced to home detention who should be in jail behind bars,” the sheriff said.