Dubois County Council not happy to hear community corrections requests

County Councilman Greg Kendall informed Judge Mark McConnell that community corrections was owed over $600,000 in unpaid fees from inmates.

Those numbers were slapped in front of the Dubois County Superior Court Judge, who also serves as president of the Dubois County Corrections Advisory Board, when he appeared at the Dubois County Council meeting to tell them of the board’s actions to ease the corrections department’s budget woes. A story about those problems is available here.

According to McConnell, community corrections is in the hole due to the increased cost of insurance and employee benefits that have occurred since 2003. He presented his findings indicating that insurance costs had doubled over the past ten years greatly precipitating the budget issues that forced the department to request $44,000 in October. The money was necessary to pay for employees wages and benefits for the rest of 2013, however, J.P. Weisheit told the council more money would have to be allocated to cover expenses at the facility beginning in January 2014.

McConnell presented a request for the county to assume responsibility for paying the correction employees’ insurance benefits to close the gap between the budget and the operating expenses of the facility to the county commissioners last Monday. They took it under advisement at the time. He appeared at the county council to present his plan last night although with no action from the commissioners, the council was merely given time to debate the problems and the proposed solution with no outcome in the end.

Kendall did reveal during the meeting that since 2006, over $600,000 in fees for inmates to use the service have went unpaid and he told McConnell that corrections should be taking steps to force the inmates and participants to pay.

According to McConnell, the $600,000 owed is not enough to alleviate the department’s money problems. “Averaged over the life of the program, it’s not enough to cover our expenses,” he told Kendall.

But Kendall would hear nothing of it as he berated the department for allowing the inmates to take advantage of the system to stay out of jail. “Put them back into jail if they don’t pay,” Kendall told the judge.

Councilman Shane Lindauer however disagreed with Kendall, stating he hadn’t heard anything that had convinced him that putting the inmates back into jail was the best way to deal with the problem.

Councilman Jerry Hunefeld, who also sits on the County Corrections Board, reminded the council that taking them out of the program could cost the county money in taxes and operating expenses at the jail. In addition those inmates are able to hold down jobs, support their families and add to the tax revenue of the county.

In the end, Judge McConnell attempted to placate Kendall by pointing out that corrections had saved the county between $11.3 and $30 million since its inception.

It appeared Kendall understood the problem but, in spite of the long-winded debate between Kendall and McConnell, nothing would be decided Monday night. The county commissioners will examine the issue at their next meeting scheduled for Monday, December 2 at 9:oo a.m. and if they decide to make it county policy to cover those expenses, the issue will be brought to the council for it to decide to fund it, or not.

Kendall did give McConnell the number of the Tippecanoe County Assistant Community Corrections Director, Alison Miner, to discuss their successful program and their efforts to collect from inmates.