BATESVILLE -- County jails currently housing state inmates because of a lack of prison space will see few -- if any -- reimbursement checks in the next 10 months, a state official warned the Board of Corrections at its Friday meeting.
"The phone calls are going to be coming," said Mike Carraway, assistant director of administration for the Arkansas Department of Correction.
"We will be telling everyone to call the governor," he added.
At this time, Carraway has a stack of outstanding invoices totaling $5.3 million.
Sometime this month, the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration will release $1 million in funding designated for county-jail reimbursements. After that, however, the department will release no additional money until June 2015.
On Friday afternoon, the number of state inmates backlogged in county jails stood at 2,227. The Pulaski County jail houses the majority of inmates awaiting transfers to state prisons.
Three times in recent months, the jail has "closed" because of overcrowding at state and local levels. What that means is for a specific period of time, the facility turns away nonviolent and property-crime offenders.
It costs the jail $45 a day to house an inmate. The state reimbursement is only $28 per inmate, but it does help offset expenses, said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Carl Minden.
"We'd rather have the bed space than the money, but we do need the money," he added. "This isn't totally shocking news to us. It has happened before. We'll continue to bill them, and when they get the money, they'll pay us."
Minden said it was too soon to tell how the lack of reimbursements would affect the jail's budget. If the situation becomes too dire, the sheriff could ask the Pulaski County Quorum Court for additional funding, he said.
In January 2010, when the Department of Correction fell behind in making reimbursement payments, Gov. Mike Beebe urged county sheriffs to lobby lawmakers for his proposal to redirect state funds set aside for lawmakers' onetime projects to pay counties what they were owed for holding state prisoners in jails around the state.
Beebe suggested that the money come from the state's rainy-day fund. During the 2010 fiscal session, lawmakers pulled $7 million from the fund and gave it to the prison system as a one-time payment to help it catch up on reimbursing sheriffs.
At that time, the Pulaski County jail held 1,030 inmates -- 205 of whom were state inmates.
Fast-forward to 4 1/2 years later: When the jail "closed" for the third time in late August, the population count was at 1,287. Of those, 421 of the inmates were awaiting state prison beds.
The jail is funded to house only 1,210 inmates.
State Desk on 09/06/2014