FARMINGTON — Franklin County commissioners on Tuesday endorsed a letter asking Gov. Janet Mills for help addressing a budget deficit at the Franklin County Detention Center driven by state tax caps on jail funding and the distribution of funding to county jails.
“For the past four years, I have been struggling to keep the doors open at the Franklin County Jail,” Sheriff Scott Nichols wrote in the letter reviewed and endorsed by commissioners Tuesday.
The letter states that in 2019 the jail had a budget of $2.11 million; but because of the state tax caps, which limit the amount of taxes that can be collected locally to fund county jails, the county could collect only $1.78 million.
The caps, which are a holdover from the state’s failed jail consolidation plan of 2008, meant the Franklin County jail was operating on a deficit of $323,525 before the first invoice of the fiscal year, according to Nichols.
Even with additional funding from the state, he said, the jail still was left with a shortfall of $100,000 and forced to dip into reserves.
At the same time, Nichols said, costs to run the jail are going up. Most inmates don’t have medical insurance and the jail routinely exceeds its medical costs.
Staffing is a consistent problem, and when a corrections officer leaves, there is a lengthy process for hiring new staff that includes a five-week training academy until they can start work. In the meantime, the jail must pay overtime to other officers.
“A more permanent solution must be found,” Nichols wrote to Mills. “I am appreciative of the generous $18 million you are proposing in your budget for jails statewide. My concern is the method on how jail funding is distributed. Every year we are the losers in the funding arena, and since we are small, we are always the least to be considered.”
With regard to the tax caps, Nichols said a solution would be to allow county commissioners and the county budget committee the freedom to exceed tax caps if needed.
He said there is pending legislation, L.D. 973, introduced by Rep. Charlotte Warren, D-Hallowell, that seeks to allow the counties to exceed the tax caps at least once in a four-year period in order to bridge budget shortfalls.
Nichols told commissioners at their regular meeting Tuesday he plans to send the letter to Mills, who is from Farmington, “so she can get an unfiltered view of what’s happening here in her home county.”
He also is asking Franklin County budget committee members, the county treasurer and the county clerk to sign on to it.
“Governor Mills looks forward to receiving and reviewing the Sheriff’s letter,” Lindsay Crete, press secretary for Mills, said in an email. “Her goal is to support the state’s corrections system in a way that makes fiscal sense and advances the mission of the Department of Corrections to reduce recidivism and support rehabilitation of incarcerated Mainers.”
Since the repeal of the state’s jail consolidation plan in 2015, Nichols said, Maine sheriffs have continued some of the best practices it introduced, such as a shared transportation hub, community corrections programs that involve pre-trial release or conditional release, alternative sentencing, and mental health services and substance abuse treatment.
“Unlike the state prison system, we receive people at their absolute worst, drug or alcohol addicted, some in a mental health crisis — all fresh from the event that brought them into custody,” he wrote. “Franklin County does an exemplary job meeting their needs, all we ask is that we have proper funding mechanisms in place to allow us to do our job.”
In other news Tuesday, commissioners moved to put on hold a $6,250 payment to Western Maine Community Action despite a plea from one of the agency’s program directors.
WMCA, a nonprofit specializing in energy, housing and workforce development, has been at the center of an ongoing feud between commissioners and similar groups stemming from a plan to end county funding for social services by the next fiscal year.
“If you can show me that $12,000 would get you an additional $25,000 or $50,000 for a specific purpose, I’m willing to write you that check for $12,000 as long as I know it’s going specifically to gather more money,” District 2 Commissioner Charlie Webster said. “That’s what we’ve been asking for all along. If we are going to continue to give you money, we want to know it’s going to a specific purpose, not going to salaries or wage increases.”
The county budget for nonprofit social services, including WMCA and other groups, is currently $61,200 and represents about 1 percent of the county’s overall budget.
Funding was cut by about $5,000 last year but is down by more than $100,000 from two years ago, prompting some agencies to approach individual towns in Franklin County to make up the difference.
At the Farmington Town Meeting last week, several residents said they support their county taxes going to social service agencies such as WMCA, Western Maine Transportation Services and Seniors Plus, and they approved a resolution asking the commissioners to do away with their policy.
Webster said Tuesday, however, that not every town in the county feels that way, so the decision is better left to individual towns.
Bill Crandall, program manager for housing and energy services at WMCA, said it’s not efficient for his agency to have to approach every community to ask for funding rather than go straight to commissioners.
Without WMCA, which helps provide things such as heating assistance for low-income people, he said towns are forced to pay out more in general assistance funds.
“I just think some of these towns already see the value of not wasting their time and their voters’ time,” Crandall said. “They get to be represented through the commissioners. My thinking is at some point your perspective on this might not line up with the rest of the folks you’re representing in the county. If we only have a select few making the decision and they’re not really listening to the towns, there’s something wrong.”
Rachel Ohm — 612-2368
Twitter: @rachel_ohm
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