PORTLAND, Maine — The fight between Somerset County officials and the Board of Corrections moved Thursday to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court when justices heard oral arguments on the issue of how surplus boarding fees earned from housing federal pretrial detainees can be spent.
Somerset County sued the board in 2013 when it refused to pay the county its anticipated third-quarter payment for the fiscal year. Somerset County claimed the board owed it $280,000 toward jail operations, according to court documents.
The Board of Corrections withheld the money because the county used some of the federal money from boarding fees to offset bond payments for its jail, which opened in 2008 in Madison, and to hold down taxes. The board claimed that state law requires that all jail revenue go toward correctional operations and services.
Supreme Judicial Court Justice Donald Alexander, sitting in Skowhegan as Superior Court justice, ruled in February in the county’s favor. He found that there’s no law prohibiting the use of federal funds to make jail debt payments.
Alexander said that the Board of Corrections cannot mandate what happens to federal prisoner revenue beyond what’s budgeted, but it can ensure that the counties meet the obligations for corrections that they budget. That meant that when a county jail’s income from federal boarding fees exceeds what it budgeted, the money can be used to pay off debt, the judge ruled.
The state appealed Alexander’s decision to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Alexander recused himself from the case and did not sit in on oral arguments held Thursday at the Cumberland County Courthouse.
Assistant Attorney General Andrew Black, who represented the Board of Corrections in the appeal, said in his 54-page brief that Somerset County has the authority to collect taxes to retire jail debt, but the board does not.
“But it chose to divert its surplus federal revenues for that purpose instead,” Black said in his brief. “This outlier county was now acting with complete disregard to its approved budget and longstanding practices and in a manner that the SBOC determined was in violation of law.” Condoning Somerset‘s actions and funding its exploits would only incentivize other counties to take similar actions that would be destructive to the coordinated correctional system.”
Michael Hodgins, the Portland attorney who represents Somerset County in the appeal, said in his brief that the law is silent on how income from federal boarding fees may be spent.
“Each county has a unique set of costs incurred to house federal prisoners, including debt service costs, and can contract with the U.S. Marshals Service to achieve a price that suits both parties,” Hodgins said in his brief. “For these reasons, the exclusion of federal prisoner revenue is an unambiguous omission of the overall statutory scheme. When construing the entire statutory scheme, the [Board of Corrections] cannot simply infer authority over federal revenue and still achieve a result harmonious with the entire statute, which otherwise excludes all mention of these prisoners, or the attached revenue.”
Justice Ellen Gorman noted that Somerset County is one of the poorest counties in the state and that the jail was designed to house federal detainees before the Board of Corrections was formed. The intent was to use that income to pay off the debt, she said.
“Don’t officials have an obligation to keep taxes down?” Gorman asked Black.
He replied that taxpayers expect them to, but officials must follow the law when they do so.
Justice Joseph Jabar, who presided as a Superior Court Justice for many years in Somerset County, observed that the statute seemed to require all surplus revenues be used for correctional services. He questioned whether the law was silent on using them to pay off debt.
There is no timetable under which the justices must issue a decision,but other counties that earn revenue by boarding federal detainees, including Penobscot and Cumberland counties, are anxious for the question to be settled.
BDN writer Nick McCrea contributed to this report.