From the Director’s Desk

County Lines

Magazine

County Lines is the official publication of the Association of Arkansas Counties. It is published quarterly. For advertising inquiries, subscriptions or other information relating to the magazine, please contact Christy L. Smith or Scott Perkins at 501.372.7550.

Executive Director / Publisher Chris Villines Communications Director/ Managing Editor Scott Perkins Communications coordinator/ Editor Christy L. Smith

AAC Executive Board:

Mike Jacobs – President Roger Haney – Vice President Judy Beth Hutcherson – Secretary-Treasurer Sherry Bell Debra Buckner Sue Liles Bear Chaney Andrea Billingsley Jimmy Hart John Montgomery Patrick Moore Rhonda Cole Joe Gillenwater David Thompson Bill Hollenbeck Will Jones Debbie Wise

National Association of Counties (NACo) Board Affiliations

Alvin Black: Public Lands Steering Committee. He is the Montgomery County Judge. Roger Haney: Board of Directors. He is the Washington County Treasurer and is also on the Telecommunications & Technology Steering Committee. Ted Harden: Finance & Intergovernmental Affairs

Steering Committee. He serves on the Jefferson

County Quorum Court. Haze Hudson: Transportation Steering Committee.

He serves on the Miller County Quorum Court. David Hudson: Vice Chair of NACo’s Justice and

Public Safety Steering Committee. He is the

Sebastian County Judge and member of the Rural

Action Caucus Steering Committee. Mike Jacobs: NACo Board of Directors, the Membership Committee and the Agricultural & Rural

Affairs Steering Committee. He is the Johnson

County Judge.

Jail budget shortfall is tantamount to a crime

Director’s Desk

Imagine, if you will, a middle class family with a young son somewhere in suburban Arkansas. The Chris Villines family chemistry is wonderful, they spend time AAC together recreating and enjoying life, attending Executive Director church on Sundays and heading out for dinners and movies as time allows. One day the parents call the son into the kitchen and initiate the all too familiar family conference.

“Son,” the father says “your mother and I have been doing some thinking. You are now 13, and all that you do is dependent on us. You are, for all intents, a subdivision of our family. We are tasked with the responsibility of caring for you and as such we believe we’ve done a pretty good job of clothing you, feeding you, providing a house for comfort and safety and generally giving all the sustenance that a young man could need, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure,” replied the son. “You are the best parents a growing boy could have!”

The mother engaged, “That’s great to hear, Junior, because we believe these things to be our responsibility, and we are happy to provide you with what you need.” She continued, “Junior, our budget has ups and downs, and we have to squeeze things around here from time to time to make ends meet … you know that, right?”

“I do,” said Junior.

The dad interjected, “Good, good ... so we are all on the same page. Junior, your mother and I need to do some financial juggling, so we have come up with a plan that will work well for all of us as we move forward. Right now we pay about $2,400 per year for your health insurance, and we have determined that the best way to handle this from this point forward is to let you pay this health insurance yourself.”

Junior, not even knowing he had health insurance, was perplexed to say the least.

Dad continued, “So, today, we called our insurance agent and asked that he start sending you the bill for this insurance — but don’t worry, we will give you a $200 allowance per month so you can pay the bill.”

Junior replied, “Well, I guess that will be alright, but I don’t quite understand.”

“Wait a minute,” mom interjected. “It’s all taken care of, we are here for you and we want to make this work.”

Junior paused and reflected for a minute. He thought back to his 7th grade accounting class and the lessons Mr. E. Jones was teaching him, and he wisely asked, “Well, I have learned about inflation, and I know from watching all the political ads lately that my insurance is going to go up, so will you continue to increase the pay as my insurance gets more expensive?”

Dad sat back, thought for a minute, and said, “Well, son, inflation does happen, but it might not. I think we’re pretty firm at the $200 per month because that’s all we can really afford … you know we haven’t had a raise in years and sometimes we >>>

just have to make sacrifices. In fact, your mother voluntarily cut her salary recently to keep her employer happy.”

Junior could not hide the expression of disappointment on his face.

“Now Junior,” said mom. “We all have to face the unknown, and you are no different. I would like to tell you one other part about this, and I don’t want you to get upset about it. But your father and I are going to be a bit short for a while, so we can only give you $100 a month until we get a bonus sometime next year. At that point, if we get the bonus, we will pay you back all that we owe you! Isn’t that great!”

At this point, Junior, red in the face, couldn’t help himself … he stood up and ran outside as quickly as he could.

Pretty far-fetched, don’t you think? There’s no way a family could really operate this way … it makes no sense. From a financial standpoint this is a recipe for disaster. From a relational standpoint there’s no way possible for Junior and his parents to reconcile. Budgeting is hard, but laying the responsibility on Junior is certainly not the right way to handle it. Not accounting for inflation is a major short-sightedness, and not having the money to pass to Junior for payment is tantamount to a crime.

As much as I’d like to tell you a situation like this could never happen, I cannot. As we close out the 2014 year the jail funding/overcrowding crisis has put the counties (Junior) in this exact position with Arkansas state government (Mom and Dad). It’s an incredibly sophomoric comparison, but the facts are that counties as a subdivision of state government are under the gun from the parent that should be there to protect our interests.

At the date of this writing, more than 2,500 state inmates are sitting in our county jails. These jails were designed to detain wrongdoers in our communities. Instead they serve collectively as the largest state prison unit. Approximately 30 percent of the beds that you and your counties voted to create through taxing initiatives to house local criminals are stacked with hardcore felons awaiting bed space to open up in our state prison units. The results are predictable: Inefficient jails; lack of threat of incarceration, which perpetuates crime and non-payment of fines; riots; early released non-violent offenders who repeat their crimes; unsafe conditions; and worst of all — felons training misdemeanants to commit hardcore and more violent crimes.

The perfect criminal justice storm has hit Arkansas. Overcrowding and a lack of funding have delivered our counties the Rocky Balboa left-right jabs resulting in two black eyes. From a budgeting standpoint, our counties find themselves in a budgeting cycle with more than $7 million owed to us by the state … all calculated on an incredibly low and long-standing estimated cost of $28 per day, per inmate, despite the fact that our annual reports compiled and submitted to the state show a more realistic cost of almost $50 per day, per inmate. An argument recently emerged that our reports must be inaccurate because they include capital costs in their calculation. This argument is short sighted in that our capital costs and new jail construction are indeed a valid expense. Were it not for state inmates bloating our local jails many of our counties would not have taken on aggressive jail building.

In FY2015 (July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015) our state did something unprecedented in prisoner per-diem funding. To understand this, we all first need to understand how the state budget works. Under the Revenue Stabilization Act, all funding from the state of Arkansas is divided into categories “A,” “B,” “C” and so on. This is best explained by delineating the “needs” versus the “wants.” Needs are higher up on the category list, wants further down — and it is only after the needs are funded that the state begins to allocate money to the wants. Category “A,” or the “needs,” is fully funded by taking collections and dividing them out over a 12-month period. If the revenue exceeds the forecasts, then category “B” gets funded, but only at the end of the fiscal year — say June of 2015.

Historically all of our jail reimbursement money has been funded in category “A.” This is very logical as we are housing prisoners that are a state responsibility and nobody has ever questioned the fact that this is a need. Just like K-12 education, the safety of our communities sits at the pinnacle of state responsibilities when it comes to her citizens. But this year, for some reason, the state funded approximately $9.5 million in category “A” and $7 million in category “B.” Why jail funding would ever be in category “B” is a mystery. To further complicate things, if we maintain an average daily holding of more than 2,500 inmates in our jails, the real responsibility of the state should be closer to $25.5 million.

Instead of getting about $2 million per month from the state, our counties are collectively receiving only $750,000 per month in reimbursements. This gap that the state owes but can’t pay exceeds $7 million right now … and it grows each passing month.

Poor Junior.

This problem must be fixed. Counties could very well see layoffs and lack of services across the board, not to mention communities battling an increased wave of crime. In county government, we do not have the luxury of spending time figuring out the best way to handle the criminal justice system. We fix problems on an hour-by-hour basis, day by day. We deal with the shortages as they come to us.

Counties have not asked for more than they deserve. My guess is that we, like Junior, would be fine with the arrangement of paying with inflation adjustments and true budgeting because we would rather solve problems — together, like a family. We do not make it a habit of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Junior did not look his parents in the eye and ask for $300 a month. He would have been fine with the $200. He, like counties, would want to be realistic about the problem and do what he could to help the family out. Our counties feel the same way.

With a legislative session on the horizon, we ask that each of you take a hard look at where your county stands with regards to overcrowding and outstanding invoices to the state. It is only through education and outreach from each of you that we can effectively communicate this issue to our communities and our legislators. There are many issues we must deal with in the near future, but none so critical and paramount to the interests of our counties as this one. Sometimes Junior has to be the leader.