County officials are trying to combat extra costs caused by the disparity between the beds Athens County budgets for the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail and the number of people actually using them.
Although Athens County contracts with Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail to house 76 inmates, more than one in every 10 dollars is spent on either extra or unused beds — and the county only currently has 62 people in the jail.
Athens County inmates make up about 30 percent of the inmates in the jail, which has inmates from seven counties and contracts with five of them, according to data from the jail.
In March alone, Athens County paid $7,791 for male beds it didn’t use and had to pay an extra $6,413 for female beds it needed but did not have in its budget, said Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins, who sits on the jail board for SEORJ.
Though the number of beds Athens County pays for is set in a yearly budget, it is not always easy to tell how many beds a county will need in a given year, Adkins said.
“It’s hard to hit the number, because sometimes you go over (the contractual agreement) with female beds, or if you have other counties that need extra male beds, we can get some of that money back,” Adkins said.
Other counties will sometimes pay to use Athens County’s beds, but that’s not common enough to make up for the amount of money wasted, Adkins added.
The extra spending comes amid a change in the per-day cost of housing an inmate; it was increased from $53 to $58 on March 28.
If the numbers for used female and unused male beds remained the same as they were in March, the county would spend $186,528 at the new cost per day rate each year, according to jail data. The county would spend the same amount even if Athens had fewer inmates in the jail than had been budgeted.
Athens County Auditor Jill Thompson and the Athens County Commissioners are working on a way to bring these costs under control.
“I also think there should be some liberties in (the contract) so you’re not paying for a male bed you’re not using but also paying an overage for a female bed you need,” Thompson said.
If these liberties were granted, the county would have saved $6,000 last month and only had to pay one overage charge, Thompson added.
“There are not enough female beds at the jail,” Adkins said. “Usually every female bed is used every day.”
Athens County has the highest ratio of contracted male to female beds in the jail; Vinton and Morgan counties have the lowest, according to data from the jail.
Both Thompson and Adkins, who sit on the jail board for the commissioners, said they did not know why the county budgeted the way it did, as the decision was made before they took office.
The only way for Athens to change its contractual agreement with the jail would be to have a proposal passed by a two-thirds vote of the jail board, which includes members from all the counties contracting with the jail, Adkins said.
If the Ohio University Police Department or Ohio State Highway Patrol were to use one of Athens County’s beds, the county would not be reimbursed, Adkins said.
“The state government always complains about the burden the federal government puts on the state; these people are hypocrites,” Adkins said. “They put the same burden on county governments. They mandate us to do certain things but don’t give us any money to do that.”
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