PINE BLUFF -- After much wrangling, Jefferson County officials hammered out a $25.5 million budget for 2020, partly by only partially funding the sheriff's office, county jail, Juvenile Justice Center, and the Solid Waste Department.
The county is projected to take in $28.9 million in 2020, and by state law can only budget up to 90% of projected revenue in its annual budget.
The Jefferson County Quorum Court approved the budget Monday night during its regular meeting.
In a special meeting, held just before the regular meeting, the Quorum Court approved another stopgap funding measure for the chronically underfunded sheriff's office, county jail and Juvenile Justice Center that will allow the department to operate for the remainder of the year.
According to Sheriff Lafayette Woods Jr., the county lockup came within three days of being unable to meet its October payroll obligations when a surge of tax revenue before the Oct. 15 deadline enabled the county to partially fund the jail's appropriation just before the paychecks were due.
In next year's budget, the sheriff's office is budgeted for nine months at $1.95 million, the county jail is funded for six months at $1.99 million, and the Juvenile Justice Center is funded for six months at $918,722.
"I don't know how to proceed with a six- to nine-month budget," Woods said. "How do I hire people? It doesn't make sense to me."
Most budgets remained flat from last year. However, the county judge's office budget received an increase to pay for a $130,000 loan payment for an energy savings project that was completed two years ago, and the county clerk's office budget received an increase to help cover additional costs that will be incurred during next year's primary and general elections.
"The election process was added to her budget because she has to do elections next year," County Judge Gerald Robinson said. "That's why that money was added to her budget."
Five of the county's six circuit courts also took a hit in their funds to pay a court bailiff, with the approved budget providing six months' funding to pay the bailiffs in those courts.
Division V Circuit Court Judge Jodi Dennis raised an objection with Robinson over her budget, saying that while her office received funding for six months to pay a bailiff, funding for a part-time position was cut.
"I've got an employee who is going to lose a whole $12,000, but it's important to her," Dennis said.
Robinson pointed out that the money cut from Dennis' budget didn't go to pay a part-time employee but was being used to supplement the pay of a full-time employee, which he said incurred additional obligations the county also had to pay.
"One of the reasons we cut that position judge, was because you have a full-time employee who is paid by the state," Robinson told Dennis. "You utilized that $12,000 to pay additional money to that state employee, which the county pays retirement and Social Security match for the full salary, which includes the part-time and the full-time pay."
Justice of the Peace Ted Harden, who chairs the county finance committee, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the reason the sheriff's office and the adult and juvenile lockups were only partially funded was to help the county keep its budget underneath the mandated 90% limit of projected revenue that it can budget.
"It's happened before," Harden said. "Hopefully we'll see more revenues come in and we can go ahead and fund it on out. We'll have to do something."
Harden said the county is expecting additional revenue to come in during the first six months of the year from Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursements for the spring floods that hit the county this year as well as tax revenue from the recently completed Saracen Casino annex.
Harden admitted to some trepidation over only partially funding the sheriff's operations, but he said he is hopeful the funding will be found.
"I wouldn't say I'm confident but I do believe we'll have additional revenues that we haven't identified yet," he said. "As you know, it's a mandate to have a jail and to have a sheriff, and a lot of revenues the sheriff has the potential to collect haven't been coming in, so hopefully he'll be able to address that as well."
Woods, however, said it appeared to him that the county is trying to balance the budget on the back of the sheriff's office, which he said presents significant challenges as he tries to keep enough employees working to staff operations.
"We've got hard costs that we have to meet," Woods said. "We've got our personal services budget, which includes salaries. We've got utilities costs in both the jails, which run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, whether we've got one person in jail or we've got 300."
Woods said having a partial budget appropriation will force him to come back to the Quorum Court for more funding as he gets close to the end of his appropriation, a situation that he said he has been in for much of this year as well.
"I don't want to say we'll come back for a supplemental appropriation because it's not supplemental when we should have gotten the appropriation to begin with," he said. "When it's inadequate to begin with, it makes it very difficult to believe that nine months out for the sheriff's department and six months out for the jail, that the money will be there when we need it."
State Desk on 11/19/2019