WISCASSET, Maine — The Lincoln and Sagadahoc Multicounty Jail Authority has unanimously approved contracts to house inmates from Kennebec and Oxford counties.
Kennebec County agreed to a 10-month, two-week contract to house up to 10 inmates for $204,000, according to Col. Mark Westrum, correctional administrator for Two Bridges Regional Jail. The jail began housing Kennebec County inmates on Aug. 17, he said.
The jail will house up to 25 inmates from Oxford County for $600,000, and it will be responsible for the cost of their minor medical expenses, according to Westrum. Oxford County will pay for major medical expenses.
If the number of inmates from Oxford County exceeds 25, the dollar amount of the contract would be adjusted, Westrum said.
The Oxford and Kennebec contracts follow the same guiding principles, Westrum said. The law that now governs the county corrections system does not allow jails to charge per diem boarding rates to house inmates. Jail authority members were careful to note any adjustment to Oxford’s contract based on additional inmates would be “prorated” to avoid language that conflicts with the law.
While unable to say the contracts are based on a per diem rate, “the math is the math,” Westrum said, in explaining the figures arrived at in negotiations.
With an additional $804,000 in revenue, the deficit budget the jail authority passed in June, with expenditures exceeding revenue for the 2016-17 fiscal year, will need to be revised, Westrum said. The additional revenue was not anticipated when the budget was prepared.
Kennebec County contacted Two Bridges to inquire about a contract a few weeks ago, Westrum said.
“It was a surprise,” he said.
The county is undergoing renovations to its jail to add up to 30 additional beds, and it needed to find a short-term placement for inmates displaced in the process.
In July, Oxford County officials attended a jail authority meeting to request a contract to house its inmates at Two Bridges. Oxford County was housing its inmates at the Cumberland County Jail; however, Cumberland County was proposing a steep increase in the rate it was going to charge Oxford County.
According to the Oxford County administrator, jail administrator and sheriff, the county could not afford the rate hike.
Days before the jail authority meeting, Oxford County commissioners voted unanimously to enter into a contract with the jail authority to house Oxford County inmates at Two Bridges.
Cumberland County Manager Peter Crichton was on hand at the commissioners’ meeting in a last-ditch effort to retain Oxford County inmates, Westrum said.
The proposal from Cumberland County to increase Oxford County’s cost by more than 50 percent, from about $650,000 per year to $1.4 million, or from about $50 per day for each inmate to $108 per day, sent Oxford County scrambling for an alternative placement for its inmates.
After the start of negotiations between Oxford County and Two Bridges, Cumberland County lowered its asking price.
According to Westrum, Cumberland County obtained a draft of Two Bridges’ contract with Oxford County and offered to match it with no limit on the number of inmates Oxford County could house at the Cumberland County Jail.
Oxford County commissioners, however, chose Two Bridges.
Oxford and Kennebec counties are the latest counties to sign contracts with Two Bridges; Waldo County was the first and holds an 18-month contract for a total of $1.8 million.
The contracts are keeping Two Bridges’ budget out of the red. The law that governs the county corrections system eliminated the ability of former flagship jails, which housed out-of-county inmates in the era of the Maine Board of Corrections, from charging per diem boarding rates to house out-of-county inmates.
The law also directs state funding to the county where the inmate originates, not the jail that houses the inmate.
The contracts allow Two Bridges to charge counties for housing their inmates without violating the law’s prohibition on per diem boarding rates.
The jail authority also has been negotiating a contract with Knox County, a process that has been on hold as Knox County attempts to revise the mission of the Knox County Jail, Westrum said.
While the contracts are providing Two Bridges with much-needed revenue, it is a short-term solution. For Westrum, the long-term solution that makes sense is to fold Knox and Waldo counties into the jail authority to run Two Bridges as a four-county consortium.
The combined tax caps of the four counties, or the amount of taxes that can legally be spent on county corrections, is more than enough to run Two Bridges, Westrum said. The number of inmates Knox, Waldo, Sagadahoc and Lincoln counties collectively generate can easily be housed at Two Bridges, he said.
For Westrum, transforming the jail authority into a four-county consortium that no longer needs to rely on the state is the answer to the problems that have plagued Two Bridges since the Board of Corrections collapsed.