Corrections officers get layoff notices as feds cut ICE program for jail

By Randa Wagner -

The recent changes in the way the United States Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity (DHS) is han­dling the Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) pro­gram is tak­ing a toll on the Mor­row County Cor­rec­tional Facility.

“We’re not going to be able to main­tain our cur­rent level of oper­a­tions,” Sher­iff Steve Bren­ne­man told com­mis­sion­ers at a spe­cial meet­ing Fri­day morning.

The very pro­gram that pre­vented the clos­ing of the financially-strapped jail in the Spring of 2009 is now par­ing back on the num­ber of ille­gal immi­grants to be housed at county cor­rec­tional cen­ters. DHS has released more than 2,000 immi­grants in Feb­ru­ary with plans to release 3,000 more dur­ing March, the Asso­ci­ated Press reported March 2, 2013.

For the Mor­row County Jail, going from 50–55 detainees per day to 25–30 is a sig­nif­i­cant cut in fund­ing from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment; financ­ing the facil­ity relies on to pay the salaries of cor­rec­tions offi­cers and jail per­son­nel. At the time the sher­iff signed a con­tract with ICE, he knew it would take an aver­age of 50 detainees per day to meet pay­roll. Oper­a­tional costs have been cut over the years as well, down to the present $333,000 from the county’s gen­eral fund.

“Right now, we have just over one month’s worth of salary money avail­able that will get us through March,” Bren­ne­man said. “We have $149,000 due to come into out­side hous­ing from ICE from Hardin, Lawrence and a few other coun­ties. When it gets here, that will be two months’ worth of salaries.”

The sher­iff explained the Jan­u­ary billing for ICE hasn’t arrived yet, but the billing is not going to keep up with payroll.

“We have to have over $70,000 a month com­ing in,” the sher­iff explained. “In Feb­ru­ary we billed $44,000 — we need $70,000… the num­bers don’t work.”

Coun­ties are respon­si­ble for pro­vided hous­ing for inmates, and whether it’s in their own facil­ity or another county’s, it costs money to house them and pro­vide med­ical care.

Bren­ne­man and his staff sat down and worked out three options, “none of which are good,” he said.

Option 1. Com­pletely shut down the jail and house inmates in other facilities.

Aver­ag­ing 45 Mor­row County inmates a day, it comes to $750,000 a year just in hous­ing costs: it doesn’t include trans­porta­tion, med­ical expenses, etc. Most jails aver­age cost is $60 — $65 per day, and at just $50 a day, it’s $750,000 to house them out.

Option 2: Just house local pris­on­ers in the felony pod area, which will hold 21 inmates. That means find­ing hous­ing for 24, which is about $350,000, annu­ally plus the cost of hous­ing the local inmates.

Option 3, which was the cho­sen route: Close down one dorm, keep the pods open and keep one hous­ing area open.

“We would still do some hous­ing for ICE and still have some income com­ing in,” Bren­ne­man explained. “We would have to put a 12’ x 10’ bar­rier up (about $500–600) between the two pod areas to sep­a­rate the males and females. The issue with that is one pod holds 10 inmates and one holds 11; we are aver­ag­ing 11 females. We would be over­crowded in those pods.”

Going this route required giv­ing March 24 lay­off notices to seven employ­ees Fri­day. Even with about 25 ICE detainees per day, the facil­ity is still short about $350,000 a year. That amount does not account for the unem­ploy­ment benefits.

ICE offi­cials have indi­cated to the sheriff’s office they are at the max­i­mum num­ber of detainees they are going to get for the year.

Com­mis­sioner Tom Whis­ton said in the mean­time, they will pro­ceed to see if there are addi­tional pris­oner resources the county can get.

“Maybe the feds can clar­ify what their posi­tion is on releas­ing detainees and, rather than send­ing another $250 mil­lion of aid to Egypt, we can focus on main­tain­ing the bud­get issues that oper­ate our own coun­try. It’s an issue that affects our abil­ity to take care of our own res­i­dents in the county.”

He said the com­mis­sion­ers are going to do all they can to insure they pro­vide for the safety and pro­tec­tion of county res­i­dents and have an ade­quate means for incar­cer­a­tion with every avail­able option.

“We are going to pur­sue every pos­si­ble func­tion,” he main­tained. “My top pri­or­ity is cor­rec­tions and enforcement.”

The jail cuts are not the only issue, how­ever. Bren­ne­man said the issue with ICE also affects law enforcement.

“I have a dis­patcher, two office per­son­nel and our court secu­rity offi­cer that are also paid out of the ICE money,” he told com­mis­sion­ers. “We had to trans­fer them because of where we were on the enforce­ment bud­get — they’ve been paid out of ICE for the last year. We have not fig­ured out how to get a dis­patcher and the court secu­rity offi­cer funded,” adding the short­fall on the law enforce­ment side could add another $100,000 to the deficit by the end of the year.

Com­mis­sioner Tom Harden com­mented those amounts are in addi­tion to the $450,000 the county owes in out­stand­ing Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices debts.

“We will make sure we get our bills paid, and if that means cut­ting things or cut­ting staff else­where, we’re going to do that,” Com­mis­sioner Whis­ton stated.

County Trea­surer Dan Green said it was ‘a shame we’re talk­ing about lay­ing peo­ple off’ when the state has such a large rainy day fund.

“When we get to a point where we’re not ade­quately able to pro­tect the peo­ple, we’re lay­ing more peo­ple off and we have this money sit­ting here that’s not doing any­thing, something’s wrong, folks,” Green said. “It shouldn’t be that tough to get this across to our leg­is­la­tors and our gov­er­nor, if need be. This is not right.”

“I’ve directed the pros­e­cu­tor to pro­vide me with which funds the Com­mis­sion­ers have the abil­ity to divert or use to make sure we’re pay­ing our bills,” Whis­ton said. “I think that’s paramount.”

Regard­ing the issue of the out­stand­ing JFS bills, Whis­ton said he has spo­ken on the phone with Ohio Vice Chair­man of Finance Jeff McClain, Sen­a­tor Burke, Con­gress­man Pat Tiberi, and with Sen­a­tors Rob Port­man and Sher­rod Brown’s offices.

“So we, as com­mis­sion­ers, have con­tacted and spo­ken with every elected offi­cial at the state and fed­eral level and have informed them of the sit­u­a­tion we’re faced with,” Whis­ton said. “Sen­a­tor Burke is more aware of the Job & Fam­ily Ser­vices oper­a­tions, and it doesn’t directly tie to cor­rec­tions but does tie to the issue we have $430,000 in out­stand­ing bills and were given $147,000 for fis­cal year 2013 to pay them with. So, if I have to pay those, that means I can’t fund my cor­rec­tions and enforce­ment which is, what I feel I should be funding.”

Com­mis­sioner Harden said the state auditor’s office had two rep­re­sen­ta­tives there Wednes­day and their report stated Mor­row County is ‘look­ing at a $1.9 mil­lion short­fall this year.’

“The prob­lem is real,” Whis­ton said, “and I want the res­i­dents to under­stand that; whether that means putting a levy back on until it gets to the point they under­stand we need that revenue.”

Whis­ton added they will pare back until they get to the bare min­i­mum, but will need addi­tional funds, nonetheless.

“We can’t con­tinue to oper­ate with a $6.8 mil­lion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and expect to oper­ate cruis­ers with 200,000 miles on them and pro­vide ade­quate secu­rity for the county,” he stressed. He told Bren­ne­man the com­mis­sion­ers are going to sup­port the sheriff’s office by work­ing dili­gently to find the money to main­tain the staff and to try to make sure the county main­tains the 5-year con­tract with ICE.

ICE oper­ates deten­tion cen­ters through­out the United States. About 31,000 ille­gal aliens are held in immi­gra­tion deten­tion on any given day, in over 200 deten­tion cen­ters, jails, and pris­ons nationwide.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Mar 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.