AUGUSTA, Maine - It appears as though a temporary funding solution has been found to help Maine's struggling county jails: A legislative panel has authorized an emergency transfer of nearly $2.5 million. The Legislature stepped in to provide the money after the state Board of Corrections couldn't resolve accountability issues with Gov. Paul LePage. Corrections officials say Maine's jails will have to make do with the amount until the beginning of the new fiscal year.
It will still require the approval of the House and Senate, but a bill authorizing nearly $2.5 million in emergency funding is in the pipeline for Maine's beleaguered county jails following a unanimous vote of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee. But as committee member Rep. John Martin of Eagle Lake emphasized, the jails' problems are far from over.
"This is what you might say is a temporary fix," Martin said. "It is not a long-term fix to the issue."
Martin amended a supplemental budget amendment that originally called for a $2.1 million fix and the creation of an independent receiver to oversee the distribution of the funds. Martin had concerns that the amount was inadequate. He also objected to the term "receiver." The bill, which has the support of Gov. LePage, strikes the word receiver and instead delegates responsibility for distributing the funds to new Corrections Commissioner Joseph Fitzpatrick.
Martin says the action will forestall a domino-like failure of the state's county jail system, beginning with Aroostook County, which is currently facing a $700,000 shortfall through June 30.
"What this does, I guess, is to move the ball forward so that we don't have an immediate crisis - and of course, the first crisis as it turns out would have been Aroostook," Martin said.
The state Corrections Board, created to distribute funding to the county jails, has been in crisis for months. Last year, the Legislature overrode a LePage veto of a bill that strengthened the Board of Corrections to deal with financial disputes that might arise at the jails.
The five-member board had two slots open and a third member resigned in January leaving the panel without a quorum. LePage refused to appoint new members to the board, saying that he would prefer to see the jails operated by their respective county governments or taken over completely by the state.
Rep. Lori Fowle thinks the entire discussion about the jails has taken a wrong turn. The Vassalboro Democrat co-chairs the Legislature's Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, which is usually the committee of reference for the Corrections Board bills. Although her panel met with Appropriations, she says her committee was never consulted about the proposed solution. And Fowle says that decision has implications beyond short-term funding for the jails.
"It is bypassing the law on where the money should have gone through, which is the Board of Corrections," Fowle says. "So we're changing policy in doing this, it isn't just providing money. I do have heartburn around the fact that we're not dictating where that money goes. We are giving authority to a person to go in and start manipulating as they see fit."
While in no position to act, Corrections Board Chair Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry says Maine's county jails need to assess their financial situations very carefully between now and June 30. "Now my message would be to other counties out there: This is all we've got," Merry said. "So you need to make some choices and decisions at the local level."
Merry will be meeting with the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee to solicit support for a bill that repeals the state Board of Corrections, transfers authority of the jails back to their respective counties and provides a little more than $12 million a year in state funding.