Jail faces budget crisis

Escalating health-care and overtime costs at the Spokane County Jail are rapidly draining Sheriff Mark Sterk’s budget.

Sterk warned Spokane County Commissioners Tuesday that the jail will end the year with a $1.5 million deficit.

Now, with growing indications of a criminal justice system that appears to be ever-wanting, commissioners will hold a summit later this month to sort out the dwindling finances and growing demands from police, prosecutors, juvenile authorities, jailers, public defenders and judges.

The hope is that having all the parties in one room will make it easier to identify common needs, and how tweaking the system in one place impacts others.

“Law and justice – in the 10 years I’ve been involved in it, it is a continuing operation by crisis,” said Commissioner Phil Harris, adding that it’s time to get a handle on the situation.

It’s something that’s long overdue, said Spokane County Commissioner Mark Richard. He said the last commission didn’t do enough to fix the problem and kept criminal justice on a “shoestring budget.”

Meanwhile, the commissioners were told Tuesday by consultant Bob Glass that a growing inmate population will likely overload the jail and Geiger Corrections Center by mid-2007.

“You’re to the point, in 2½ years, where it’s really going to hit the fan,” said Glass.

The cost of expanding the jail to meet demand for another 30 years could top $80 million, while building a criminal justice and jail compound that includes incarceration and court facilities would cost $410 million, said Glass.

But before planning for the future, commissioners must first decide how to handle existing needs.

Sterk told commissioners that the jail’s overtime expenses alone could overshoot the budgeted $678,000 by $875,000. That’s despite a commissioners’ decision just one month ago to add two nurses, five corrections officers and one lieutenant to relieve the overworked jail staff.

The cost of the additional staff will be close to $500,000 a year. But the new employees won’t be fully trained and ready to go until early this fall, said Jail Commander Jerry Brady. That means continued overtime expenses.

When planning for 2005, Sterk budgeted about $110,000 less for overtime than in 2004, even though the jail exceeded its 2004 overtime budget by almost $100,000.

And the rising cost of prescription drugs along with one inmate’s kidney dialysis bill is expected to push the jail’s medical bill $800,000 higher than budgeted.

Commissioner Todd Mielke said it’s impossible to just rubber-stamp such bills without looking at ways to reduce costs.

“If we’re not careful, it will result in the reduction of personnel in January,” Mielke said. “I don’t want to lay anyone off because of poor management.”

Sterk said he’s examining options to bring the overtime and medical bills down, including changing the way overnight crews are scheduled. He blamed the high personnel costs, in part, on the way District Court cases are scheduled and how that affects transporting prisoners.

Over the past two weeks, commissioners have faced a revolving door of elected officials and department heads seeking criminal justice budget increases.

The prosecutor, public defender, juvenile justice and counsel for defense have all asked for increased staffing.

“If we grant everything requested by everyone coming through the door to date, we’ll be having money troubles,” said County CEO Marshall Farnell.

Commissioners told Juvenile Justice Director Bonnie Bush on Tuesday that they would help her with some of her needs now, but postpone decisions on whether to continue the funding next year.

Bush had already scaled back an earlier request, from five new staffers to three.

“I’m not asking for growth. We’re just asking to maintain what we have,” she told commissioners, explaining that funding for the positions had been supplied by the state until now.

Faced with a slew of similar requests, commissioners said they need to take a look at the whole picture during the criminal justice summit.

“I want to move away from this situation where every six weeks there’s a crisis from a different department,” said Mielke.