AUGUSTA — The outgoing executive director of the state Board of Corrections, Ryan Thornell, confirmed for lawmakers Tuesday that Maine’s county jails are indeed facing critical funding shortfalls and public safety could be at risk.

Thornell and Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry told a joint meeting of the Legislature’s Appropriations and Criminal Justice and Public Safety committees that many of Maine’s 15 jails were out of money.

Thornell has resigned from his post effective next week.

Merry is president of the Maine Sheriffs’ Association and one of two remaining members of the now dysfunctional five-member Board of Corrections.

Merry and Thornell, with sheriffs and representatives from at least 10 of the state’s 16 counties sitting behind them, confirmed media reports suggesting jails may have to close their doors and release prisoners if a funding crisis is not averted.

Thornell also suggested Tuesday that the Board of Corrections did have the authority, based on legislation passed in 2014, to resolve many of the funding issues, but without a quorum the board was unable to function and pass the rules necessary to see those changes through.

“Yes, we received legislation on May 1,” Thornell said. “But in order to implement that as you all wanted us to, we have to transform that into agency rules and we just have not been able to do that. So we do not know today what the impact of the legislation is or what it should be because we have not had a board membership that would allow us to take that legislation and put it into place.”

So far, Gov. Paul LePage has refused to appoint replacements to the board, saying since its formation in 2008, the board has not been able to do what it was intended to and efficiently run Maine county jails in what has been a merger of state and county corrections systems.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for LePage said the governor still believes the county jails need to serve one master and not two.  

Adrienne Bennett, LePage’s press secretary, said the governor has left his door open and is willing to work with lawmakers to find a solution but he would not appoint new board members.

‘The Legislature already has within its purview the ability to restructure the system,” Bennett said. “The governor has offered his feedback, he has met with jail administrators and he has met with legislators. There is no reason that lawmakers should be avoiding an opportunity to fix a broken system.”

Bennett said the Board of Corrections has failed in the past and LePage sees no reason why a new board would fair any better in the future.

The options left on the table seem to be either a state takeover of county jails or a full return of jail operations and funding to county governments.  

But Thornell noted Tuesday a key point of the consolidated system, that was working, was to relieve local property taxpayers of having to fully fund the county jails. Thornell also said a combination of factors were leading to higher costs for jails, not the least of which was an ever increasing pretrial population.

Thornell said jails were also not housing as many state and federal prisoners as they were in years past and subsequently were not receiving additional revenue for those inmates. On top of everything else, an increasing number of inmates with profound and often violent mental health issues were compounding jail costs at the local level.

The state’s 15 jails house a total of about 1,800 inmates daily, with 69 percent of them awaiting trial.

The statewide jail system’s budget is $80.4 million per year.

But Thornell also reiterated what he and others see as a flaw in the law that created the Board of Corrections in the first place. 

“There is no direct line of authority within the Board of Corrections system,” Thornell said. “What I mean by that is at the end of the day, no matter what strength you give the Board of Corrections, if a county refuses to follow the rule the end result is you end up in the courtroom in litigation.”

He said the board’s decisions were ineffective if they were going to constantly be tied up in litigation because they didn’t have total control of the purse strings. 

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the counties don’t want to assist the Board of Corrections because we have received tremendous cooperation from the counties, more so than I ever expected,” Thornell said. But he noted that even under the new legislation that gave the board more power, counties were still allowed to opt out and all it took was one or two counties to buck the system to break it.

The board’s last official act was to authorize the funding for jails for the last two quarters of this fiscal year, which ends June 30. But even so, some jails were going to run out of funding in April.

Overall, jails are facing about a $2.5 million shortfall, including about an $800,000 shortfall for Aroostook County.

State Rep. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, the House chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said funding the Board of Corrections appropriately was an ongoing frustration for lawmakers.

Rotundo said lawmakers know there are savings in operating the jail system in a unified statewide way and believed they had finally given the board the authority it needed to realize those savings.

“Having given you the authority as the Legislature last year and now, you are feeling that your hands are tied, because the (governor) is not making these appointments is just very difficult,” Rotundo said.

State Rep. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, suggested the Legislature may have the ability to circumvent LePage by changing the law around how Board of Corrections members are appointed. Martin suggested a law change that would put the authority to appoint at least a quorum of the board in the control of the Legislature.

“Certainly, if the governor decided he’s not going to make the appointments, there is nothing that prevents the Legislature from creating a committee where the appointees are made by the Senate president and the speaker of the House,” Martin said. “That’s obviously one way, and I have no idea if the governor would support that or not, but it’s one way this group could continue.”

Either way, Merry said, jails, including those in York, Cumberland, Androscoggin, Penobscot and Aroostook counties, were facing a crisis. He said much of that was due to the fact that underfunded jails had already depleted all other available county budget resources, including any fund balances or surpluses that may be available.

“Basically what we are asking or are looking for is a supplemental appropriation to get us through this year,” Merry said. “There are just several counties out there that have no other resources.”

As far as the Board of Corrections was concerned, he also noted it had authorized all that was left in its budget as well. “We’ve spent every dime,” he said.

Thornell will again discuss the matter with the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday.

sthistle@sunjournal.com

The money necessary to keep jails operating through June 30:

Androscoggin County Jail, $151,000

Aroostook County Jail, $782,000

Cumberland County Jail, $596,000

Penobscot County Jail, $563,000

York County Jail, $396,000

Source: Maine Board of Corrections