Ripple effects of funding losses are vast, Mahoning officials say

The sales tax funding roller coaster must stop now, the sheriff says.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Ten years of on-again, off-again sales taxes in Mahoning County have added up to a lot of money that never made it into the hands of government officials.
It stayed in taxpayers' hands instead.
How much? Try 41 million.
On May 8, residents will again be asked to consider a half-cent sales tax renewal. Only this time, they'll be asked to make it a continuous tax.
Officials say it's so criminals can stay locked up and the rest of county government can continue functioning.
The county is struggling to meet a growing demand for jail beds fueled by a rising crime rate and backlogged criminal docket in common pleas court.
That laggard docket -- the fourth-worst among Ohio's 88 counties -- is forcing the county to house inmates awaiting trial for up to 30 months at 69 per inmate per day.
The faster the common pleas docket processes cases, the faster the inmates leave our jail -- either to freedom or to an Ohio prison, where the state pays the bills.
"We can't have this roller coaster of the sales tax on and the sales tax off," said Sheriff Randall Wellington, whose department has repeatedly laid off deputies after sales tax defeats.
Some 57 percent of the revenues in the county's general fund -- its main operating fund -- come from the two half-percent sales taxes. They combine for 28 million a year.
Where money goes
Of the county's 49.6 million general fund spending for 2007, 69 percent goes to the justice system, including the sheriff's department, the jail, the courts and the coroner's and prosecutor's offices.
"The jail is funded with as much as the county can afford to fund it," said County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains. "No matter how many jail beds we have, we have enough people to fill it that go out there and commit these crimes."
At present, 75 percent of the county's main jail space is open, housing a daily average of 351 inmates as specified in a federal court order. Thirty-five new deputy sheriffs have been hired since January, bringing the number of deputies to 245 as of Friday. The new hiring is to replace deputies who have left and to allow reopening of the remaining 25 percent of the main jail space and reopening of the 96-bed misdemeanor jail. The misdemeanor jail has been closed since March 2005 because of lack of funds.
All jail facilities are scheduled to reopen this summer, and the sheriff says he still needs to hire 20 more deputies to make this happen.
But the reopenings can't happen without the renewal of the sales tax May 8, Gains and Maj. James Lewandowski of the sheriff's department said.
The jail problem stems in part from a high crime rate and a low tax base, County Administrator George Tablack said. Mahoning County gets less annual general fund revenue per citizen than other urban Ohio counties.
Overall crime in the city rose 5.5 percent in 2006 over 2005, police statistics show.
Jail agreement
Adding to the urgency of the sales tax vote, Gains said, is the need to fulfill the terms of a recently reached jail agreement. That plan ends a 3 1/2-year-old lawsuit by jail inmates, who said the overcrowding and understaffing violated their constitutional rights.
That agreement calls for all county jail facilities to be fully functional by Aug. 1. It also allows the city to get 71 jail beds free, except for meals and medical costs not covered by the county's insurance, for its misdemeanor prisoners. The city can pay 69 a day per inmate for up to 150 additional misdemeanor prisoners.
Three federal judges also ordered the jail temporarily capped at 315 male and 36 female inmates until the sheriff is able to raise staffing levels to open more of the jail. The maximum capacity of the fully opened main jail would be 548 inmates, Lewandowski said.
The federal court will monitor the jail for two more years, Gains said.
The inmate lawsuit was filed in November 2003, when some 800 inmates were crammed into the main jail, which was designed for 432 inmates.
To control the jail population after the inmates won their lawsuit in March 2005, the county's common pleas judges established an inmate release policy that prioritizes who should be locked up. Under that policy, more than 5,700 inmates have been released early over the past two years.
But that arrangement "was the only way we could keep the jail functioning. It's a revolving door," said Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the county commissioners.
"There's been an uptick in crime," County Commissioner John McNally said. "We need to solve this problem sooner, rather than later," he added.
Monthly average bookings of prisoners into the county jail rose from 540 in 2005 to 668 in 2006, for a 24 percent increase. In the first three months of this year, they averaged 692 a month, for a 23 percent increase over the same period in 2006.
Inmate releases
Inmate releases averaged 525 per month in 2005 and 638 in 2006, for a 21 percent increase. In the first quarter of this year, they averaged 705 per month, for a 32 percent increase over the same period in 2006, according to sheriff's department figures.
Although the jail doesn't compile repeat offender statistics, Wellington and Jail Administrator Alki Santamas say they attribute the city's crime increase in part to the inmate discharges.
"When the inmate population is down, crime goes up," and vice versa, the sheriff said.
"Many of those inmates that are released go out and commit other crimes. They might be minor crimes, but they still affect the quality of life. This is why we are working so hard to [fully] open that jail," Gains said. Under the release policy, inmates other than those charged with violent felonies or with domestic violence may be released.
Several improvements have been made concerning the jail, county officials said:
The day-reporting inmate program established last summer as a means of alternative sentencing has conserved jail space for more serious offenders and yielded more than 1 million in free labor (based on the minimum wage) for the community in litter and recyclables collection, grass-cutting and graffiti removal, Tablack said.
Five new prosecutors hired in October 2005 saved the county almost 1.7 million by disposing of more than 560 cases and thereby reducing the county's jail inmate population as convicted inmates moved to state prison, Gains said.
Early in 2006, through better communication among the courts, clerk of courts and sheriff's department, average time between sentencing of felons and their transfer from county jail to state prison was reduced from 71 to 10 days, McNally noted.
The agreement designed to end the inmate lawsuit "will not be a cure-all for all the problems" related to the jail, McNally said.
"The cure-all is continuing to look at the criminal justice system throughout Mahoning County, city and county courts, and making sure that the system's running as efficiently and effectively as possible," McNally said.
"It's not just a jail problem. I think it's a wide-ranging criminal justice issue. It's everybody's responsibility to help fix the problem," said McNally, who is chairman of the county's criminal justice working group, which is focused on solving jail and related criminal justice system problems.
milliken@vindy.com
To read the Ohio Supreme Court's assessment of Mahoning County Common Pleas
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