Shrinking Jail Revenues Hurts Budget
Shrinking revenues from federal prisoners in the jail will be one of the budget challenges facing Blount County in the coming fiscal years. Still, county officials expect to hold property taxes at current levels in the next budget. Reported in the Daily Times.
When the commissioners shelved a proposal to build a new jail pod back in January, time began running out on a source of revenue the county has depended upon for years to subsidize jail expenses — the housing of federal prisoners.
Having already lost state certification of the jail because of overcrowding, Sheriff James Berrong made the only choice left to him, reducing the population of federal prisoners by roughly half.
“This time last year, we had about 180 federal inmates that were generating revenue for the county,” he said, adding the jail now housed about 91. “That’s going to impact the revenue the county has. … We’re talking about a lot of money, around $5,000 a day.”
The daily rate that the U.S. Marshals Service pays to house federal inmates in the Blount County Jail is $58.50 per inmate. Depending on whom you ask, the sheriff or County Finance Director Dave Bennett, revenue from housing federal prisoners during the current fiscal year will be about $1.5 to $2 million less than previous years, but, because the county had already built in reduced revenue estimates in the budget, the actual shortfall will only be about $500,000.
“We’ll have more than enough turnback to cover that,” Bennett said. “On next year’s budget, we’ll have to bump that (revenue) number down. I don’t feel like we need to go in and reduce the budget because we can manage that from an administrative standpoint and make sure the bottom line is not a negative.”
Slashing the number of federal prisoners housed locally has resulted in the jail being recertified by the state.
On Nov. 30, 2008, there were 443 prisoners housed in the jail — 164 federal, 66 state and 213 local. About half of the state prisoners were supposed to be in state custody but there were no available beds in state prisons. The jail is only certified for 350.
On Nov. 17, 2009, there were 380, 91 being federal inmates. About 40 were state prisoners. Although this still technically exceeds the population cap in the jail, the state allows a loophole.
“The state inmates don’t count against our bed count, so if we have 40 Tennessee Department of Corrections inmates (out of 390), for their purposes, we only have 350 inmates,” Berrong said. “They can’t leave their inmates there and use that as a tool to decertify us.”
The number of state prisoners in the jail is also declining, although Berrong said housing them is a net loss for the county and that the reduction in numbers would not hurt county revenues. The state only pays counties $35 per inmate per day to house its prisoners.
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