Dubois County Community Corrections out of the fire but still in the frying pan
Jasper — Community Corrections received notice of a $200,000 injection from the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) last Wednesday.
Community Corrections Director J.P. Weisheit and Superior Court Judge Mark McConnell, president of the community corrections board, appeared at the Dubois County Commissioners meeting Monday to announce the good news.
Weisheit had applied for $175,000 in additional funding to supplement the program’s budget till the end of its fiscal year. The additional $25,000 allotted was a welcome for the beleaguered program but Weisheit couldn’t explain why the DOC had given them the extra money.
The money is a special grant in addition to the $400,000 community corrections receives from the state annually and will not be added to next year’s grant. Additionally, the annual allotment of $400,000 from the DOC is not enough to offset the continued rise in expenses at the facility.
“It will keep us out of the red, or it should, until the end of our 2013-14 fiscal year,” Weisheit said. “Beginning July 1 we will start losing money again. Under the circumstances, that loss will not change.”
At the last commissioners meeting, McConnell had requested the county pick up the tab for the benefits of the facility’s 16 employees for the rest of its fiscal year — its fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 31. On Monday, with the injection from the state, he amended the request to ask that the county take over those payments beginning July 1, 2014.
County council president Greg Kendall was happy to hear the news but reiterated his concerns about the backlog of unpaid dues from the program’s participants. At the county council meeting last week, Kendall had revealed a list citing over $600,000 in unpaid dues from the program’s history. It included dues that had been uncollected before 2006 when Weisheit was appointed director.
“I want it [community corrections] to be effective and I want it to be efficient,” Kendall explained today. “Every program has its good and bad and if you don’t stay on top of it, things can slip. We’ve go to do better. We have to be a little tougher than we have been in the past.”
Besides the nearly tripling in cost of insurance for the department’s employees since 2003, Weisheit can only collect so much money from participants who have garnishments that come before their weekly dues. “We garnish everybody,” Weisheit said today, “but we don’t get paid until those other garnishments come out. Child support is the first payment made from the participant’s wages. Then if they owe money to a business, that is next and then we are allowed a percentage of what is left which sometimes amounts to $20 or $30 dollars a week.”
To encourage participants to stay current on their payments, community corrections allows participants to take part in unsupervised visits with family if their fees are current. “An extra two hours with family is important for the participants,” Weisheit said. “And they can’t take part in that if they are behind on their fees.”
Community corrections has several programs for participants and each have varying costs to the participant. The largest constituency of the program is comprised of work release participants; they pay $100 a week to be in the program. Other programs include, community services, electronic monitoring and alcohol monitoring.
According to Weisheit, the program had grown considerably since he became director in 2006 but only added about three additional employees. “We had an average of 45 in work release and around 35 to 40 on electronic monitoring when I started in 2006,” he said. “Last Tuesday’s report had that many on electronic monitoring alone.”
The program’s size grew for several years but recently those numbers have dropped. Recently the program is averaging about 225 participants, down from the norm of 250. But this isn’t the first year the program has experienced a drop. They had about 100 less participants in 2012-13 compared to the 2011-12 fiscal year and since participant fees fund the majority of the program’s budget, those budgetary problems are expected to persist as expenses continue to rise in the future.
“Insurance has tripled and that’s not going to change,” Weisheit said about the request for the county to pay employee benefits, “that’s just going to continue to go up.”
For more information here are more stories covering this issue.
https://duboiscountyfreepress.com/inmates-fees-not-cause-shortfall/
https://duboiscountyfreepress.com/community-corrections/
https://duboiscountyfreepress.com/community-corrections-and-work-release-facing-budget-woes/
I believe it is time for us tax payers to get a full audit from all of the county departments!