ELLSWORTH, Maine — A judge has ruled that Hancock County’s lawsuit against the state over jail funding for the county’s 2014-15 budget will be allowed to move forward.
The county filed suit against the state in October 2015, arguing that the state law that limits the amount of taxes that counties can raise to fund their jails created an approximate shortfall of $121,000 in the county’s budget. The county sent a notice of claim to the Department of Corrections in July 2015 asking for the funds, which it says the state is responsible for paying, and then filed the lawsuit after it got no response.
The issue of how much money the state should give to counties to fund jail operations has been a contentious issue for years. This past spring, Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bill, LD 1614, to provide the counties with an additional $2.4 million in jail funding for the fiscal year that started July 1. But the Legislature overrode his veto.
It is not the first lawsuit involving a county and the state to arise out of the broad dispute over state funding for county jails.
In February, the state supreme court ruled against Somerset County in a lawsuit that the county had filed over the state’s decision to withhold more than $280,000 in jail funding. The state had withheld the money after Somerset County used revenue for boarding federal prisoners, which normally would have gone to the state, instead to pay debt from building a new jail in 2008.
In the current dispute between the Department of Corrections and Hancock County, the state filed a motion to dismiss the suit, arguing that the court does not have jurisdiction in the matter because the lawsuit was not filed in a timely manner.
Justice Michaela Murphy, presiding in Kennebec County Superior Court, ruled last month that because the state never responded to the county’s notice of claim, the county had six months to petition the courts for an administrative review of the state’s inaction on providing the county with the requested $121,000. The lawsuit was filed in October 2015, three months after the county had sent the Department of Corrections the notice of claim, Murphy indicated in her decision.
Bill Dale, Hancock County’s attorney in the matter, said Thursday that he is pleased with the decision.
He said that with the ruling, the state has to produce by next week a complete record of the legal documents each party has generated as a result of the dispute, and then the county has 30 days to prepare written arguments for why the state should be ordered to pay the county the $121,000 for its 2014-15 jail budget shortfall.
Oral arguments in the case, Dale added, could be scheduled for sometime this fall.
Attempts late Thursday afternoon to contact the attorney general’s office, which is representing the Department of Corrections in the lawsuit, were unsuccessful.
