June 17, 2013

Burgess: Jail funding a long-term problem for Cherokee Co.

By SCOTT WRIGHT

Share |

CENTRE — A recent state audit found that the Cherokee County Commission spent $928,400 more than it budgeted for Fiscal Year 2011.

The official in charge of the county's spending said the red ink has been on the books for the past couple of years, and will proliferate in the future without a long-term solution.

“It's the jail,” said County Administrator Tim Burgess. “Since I was hired in 2004, the costs for operating the jail have gone from around $950,000 a year to $1.7 million and I am worried about the county's infrastructure going forward.”

Burgess said commissioners have been working around the deficit by reallocating money from other areas of the county's $20 million annual budget to cover shortages at the jail.

“We've been using money from different accounts in the General Fund, and we've been pooling the cash from those funds for jail operations,” Burgess said. “We keep up with those expenditures and we know what we've used. The finding from the audit basically said, 'You can't do that, but we understand the problem you have'.”

Burgess said many counties in Alabama are facing the same situation: burgeoning jail populations and corresponding cost increases. He said Cherokee County commissioners already agreed on a partial solution, reallocating a $430,000 annual payment on a highway construction bond that recently matured.

“I asked them to redistribute those funds to the jail, and they did that about a year ago,” Burgess said. “That's not enough, but it has eased the problem by that amount.”

Another $200,000 annual payment on a 20-year-old loan to build the jail will mature in February 2014. That money will probably be transferred over to jail operations also, Burgess said. But that still leaves a gap in the hundreds of thousands.

“We have about a $400,000 annual shortage that we are borrowing internally, from those other accounts, in order to keep the jail going,” Burgess said.

The monetary machinations to cover the jail have pretty much left the General Fund, which pays for the vast majority of county operations, tapped out, he said.

“People think we get all of the $10 million that the county collects in ad valorem taxes every year and that we just have all of that money sitting there, but that's not the case,” Burgess said. “We only get $1.1 million of that money. Fifty-three percent of it goes to education, and then the state gets its share, fire and rescue gets a portion, and so on.”

Burgess said there was a time several years ago when the General Fund could afford to supplement the jail. But as costs and the number of inmates doubled, then tripled, the situation changed.

“Over time, costs have gone way up and our tax income has been at a straight-line level since the recession began in 2008,” Burgess said. “And we've taken on new duties, including animal control and court house security, just to name two.”

Years ago, voters approved a half-cent sales tax to fund the county jail, which Burgess said raises roughly $750,000 a year. At the time, it was plenty to cover costs for an average of 35 local inmates a day.

“Now, we average 135 local inmates a day and we're about a million dollars short,” Burgess said.

Burgess said he has long-term concerns about infrastructure because one of the accounts officials have been taking from to keep the jail afloat also pays for road work in the county.

“We've been taking a fifth of the one-percent highway sales tax money, which would normally fund highway construction,” he said. “Five or ten years from now, this is all going to catch up with us.”

According to Burgess that 20 percent cut, combined with redirection of the $430,000 a year from the highway bond issue and a sharp rise in paving and petroleum costs over the past few years, has pushed the county government into an untenable position.

“The county's infrastructure is going to start falling apart,” he said. “We're going to be facing a shortage of money to do anything about it because so much is going to the jail.”

Burgess said Sheriff Jeff Shaver and his staff are doing everything they can to stretch existing funds. He also said they are looking at creative ways to feed and house prisoners, provide mandated health care and also implement alternative programs to reduce costs.

Burgess said he hopes voters will consider continuation of the one-cent sales tax that expires in 2014. Currently, the estimated $1.5 million in annual revenue goes to education.

He said if education is on sound financial footing in a year's time, redirecting the tax to the jail could be a relatively simple solution to the county's most taxing financial problem.

“No one wants to talk about a tax to pay for a jail, but it sure would be nice if we could redirect those funds for 'public safety',” Burgess said. “And that's what funding the jail is, really. It's keeping lawbreakers out of the population.”