A new proposal to provide emergency funding for several of Maine’s beleaguered county jails is winning bipartisan support in Augusta.
The nearly $2.5 million needed would come from an anticipated increase in federal matching funds for the state’s MaineCare program, and not from surplus tax revenues.
Most at the State House agree that the jails need the money. But House Republicans are against the idea of using a portion of surplus tax revenues to pay for it, in part because Gov. Paul LePage wants to deposit all of that money in the state’s rainy day fund.
A new funding proposal, advanced last Friday by Senate Republicans, would instead transfer the money from an expected $30 million increase in matching funds to the state’s Medicaid program.
But House Republican Leader Ken Fredette doesn’t like the new plan either.
“The problem with this particular resolve, however, is that it does not address the issue of the cap and whether that cap needs to be removed,” Fredette said.
Fredette is referring to the historical funding model for the jails, in which consolidation efforts were leveraged by caps on county tax increases.
County sheriffs say costs are up and state funding is not where it should be, and that has resulted in serious budget deficits for some facilities. Fredette says the state has repeatedly transferred money to the jails and that until the issue of county tax caps can be resolved, the funding crisis will continue.
“And so in my humble opinion, the bill in its current form should not be supported because it does not have language in it that removes the cap,” Fredette said. “Now there are other mechanisms available to fund the jails and to remove the cap — however we cannot do that in this bill.”
Fredette suggested that the jail issue should be put off until January, when lawmakers would have more time to revisit county tax caps and jail consolidation.
But Rep. Justin Chenette, a Saco Democrat, says the new funding plan solves the short-term problem for the counties without shifting those costs to property taxpayers.
“If we talk about eliminating the tax cap, let’s bring it back to why we put the tax cap in in the first place — to protect property taxpayers,” Chenette said. “We hear back home in our districts that property taxes are through the roof and we have suggestion in this body that we want to increase property taxes. I’m sorry Mr. Speaker, that’s not why we are here.”
“Everybody wants jails for people to be locked up in but when it comes time to fund those, then people seem to draw a line almost,” said Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry.
Merry, who serves as president of the Maine Sheriffs Association, says other states are using federal health care funds to treat addiction and reduce drug related crime.
In Maine’s case, says Merry, 60 percent of the state’s inmates suffer from substance abuse and 40 percent from some degree of mental illness. With jails becoming de facto treatment centers, Merry says it only makes sense to apply the Medicaid match increase to address county jail prisoner costs.
Merry says he expects that the county tax cap issue will be a hot topic in the next legislative session, but that right now, the jails need relief.
“Our costs keep going up and the issues that we have to deal with continue to manifest and increase, such as addiction and people with mental health issues and all of that, so you’ve got to take everything into consideration,” Merry said.
Nearly a third of the House Republicans chose to support the jail resolve, giving the measure initial approval in a 102-44 vote. The measure faces additional votes.