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City to end jail-fee accord with county
‘There’s no easy solution,’ the Youngstown mayor says of the jail payment problem.
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Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams
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Prosecutor Paul Gains
YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown doesn’t plan to continue paying an additional fee to Mahoning County to house prisoners at the county jail when an agreement signed three years ago expires at the end of the month.
In a meeting Tuesday, Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams said he told county officials that effective Feb. 28, the city will no longer pay the fee — $80 a day for each misdemeanor prisoner jailed there beyond its 71st inmate.
County officials asked the city to increase that fee because of financial problems that likely will result in layoffs at the county sheriff’s department, which runs the jail.
County officials weren’t surprised by statements from Williams and other city administrators that cash-strapped Youngstown has no intention of paying any fee for its inmates, said county Prosecutor Paul J. Gains.
“We’ll see how it progresses,” Gains said of the talks with the city. “We were there to share information.”
The county and the city are facing financial shortfalls in their 2010 budgets. The sheriff’s department budget is expected to be cut by $1.5 million this year compared with 2009.
“It wasn’t an easy conversation to have,” Williams said. “There’s no easy solution.”
The city-county deal was a key component of a federal consent agreement that ended a class- action lawsuit won by inmates in March 2005 regarding understaffing and overcrowding at the jail that violated their civil rights.
The three-year deal signed in February 2007 called for the city to pay for some of its prisoners at the jail to resolve the lawsuit. The additional money from the city was to pay to keep staffing levels up at the jail to be in compliance with the federal agreement.
The deal has the county house the first 71 city misdemeanor prisoners for the cost of meals — about $1 each — and medical costs not covered by the county’s insurance.
From the 72nd city misdemeanor inmate through the city’s maximum amount of 221 prisoners at the jail, the cost is $80 a day each.
City administrators had estimated the cost three years ago at $70,000 annually.
But the projection was way off. The amount has been more than $1 million annually with the city’s three municipal court judges ordering up to 150 prisoners to the county jail each day.
That figure dropped to about $900,000 last year after the city signed a deal in August 2008 to have Community Corrections Association Inc. electronically monitor up to 50 of the city’s indigent misdemeanor prisoners.
Youngstown is the only community paying a fee to the county to house prisoners at the jail — a sore point with city officials.
“The city pays property taxes and sales tax like everyone else,” Williams said. “But the city is also paying this additional fee. This notion of paying more than $1 million over what everyone else pays is problematic to say the least. We’ve never asked the county for anything for free. We pay taxes like everyone else. Everyone else is charged one rate, and there’s another rate for us.”
Williams described the “tone of the meeting as terse at times. But there’s not a seething animosity.”
The mayor said he doesn’t know what will happen when the inmate agreement expires at the end of the month.
“Does this end up in federal court?” he asked. “I don’t know. But it might be inevitable.”
Gains said he doesn’t know how this will be resolved.
“We’ve identified the problems, and now we’ll identify the solutions,” he said. “None of us have a crystal ball. Everyone agrees it’s a problem. We want to sit down with the city and come up with a solution.”
Williams added that “no one expected there to be a simple fix. Ongoing discussion is warranted and necessary.”
skolnick@vindy.com