43
Lawrence jail union rejects 3% cut
NEW CASTLE, Pa. – The Lawrence County Prison Board will set a special meeting to weigh its options in light of the jail union’s rejection of a 3 percent wage cut for the last quarter of 2009.
County Controller David Gettings, prison board president, said he has not scheduled the meeting but the board has to discuss “what we need to do” before the regularly scheduled meeting Oct. 21.
Because of the essential nature of the jail, it has been excluded from a two-week county- employee layoff to take place when the county closes its doors during Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks.
Commissioners instead had asked the Laborers Union Local 964, which represents jail employees, to take a 3 percent pay cut for three months. The union rejected the request Tuesday by a 22-9 vote. Gettings said layoffs are one of the few options left to cut jail costs.
In the wake of the union vote, Lawrence County commissioners also said this week they are “starting the wheels in motion” to consider privatizing the county jail as a long-term cost-savings measure, though that would ultimately be a decision for the prison board.
“We have to wring savings out of the jail,” Craig said, after Thursday’s caucus meeting, explaining that it consumes 25 percent of the county budget, which faces a possible shortfall by year’s end.
At Thursday’s caucus meeting, commissioners heard reports from Treasurer Richard Rapone’s office on tax receipts and from Getting’s office on cash on hand and said the amount of local property-tax revenues paid between now and the end of the year will determine whether the county can meet the rest of the 2009 payrolls.
Commissioners have said that though the immediate budget crisis is due to the failure of the state to pass a 2009-10 budget, the budget picture is also bleak in the long run because of major cuts expected in county programs funded by the state as well as economic stresses.
Craig said that the county’s housing of state prisoners, which had been hailed as a revenue generator, is also causing problems. He said that the state-prison inmates are accustomed to more privileges and latitude in state institutions than they are receiving in the county jail.
For example, in state prisons, they have televisions in their rooms, educational opportunities, counseling and paid work. As a result, state prisoners here resent the change and are taking out their displeasure on the jail staff. The state pays the county $50 per day to house the prisoners, but each prisoner costs the county only an additional $5 daily because other costs are fixed, officials have said previously.
Craig expressed disappointment after Thursday’s caucus meeting that the union turned down the rollback, which he said would have amounted to only about $250 in lost earnings per employee compared with about a $1,000 average loss other county employees will experience during the two-week shutdown.