Wednesday, January 17, 2001

Frady: County should reconsider making cities pay for jailing municipal prisoners

By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

Fayette County Commissioner Herb Frady wants his fellow commissioners to reconsider their decision last week to end a seven-year-old agreement to house municipal prisoners in the County Jail at no charge.

"This thing was done without thinking," Frady told The Citizen Monday.

Under the commission's 4-1 vote Thursday, Fayette and its cities have until the end of this year to negotiate a new agreement. The county is formally notifying the cities that the old one, written in 1993, will be terminated Dec. 31.

The move is likely to further widen the breach that has been growing for two years between county elected officials and those in Fayetteville, Peachtree City and Tyrone over use of the jail, how to pay for the jail, and how taxes and government services are divided among county and city residents.

"The municipal courts take in fines and fees for the cities' coffers, and I don't feel it's right for them when the people don't pay their fines to have the county house those prisoners at no charge," said Commissioner Harold Bost last week after proposing to end the agreement.

Bost stressed that cities would be charged only for prisoners sentenced to jail time by municipal courts. Commissioners have complained that municipal courts sometimes jail minor offenders for weeks or months, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars in order to collect relatively small fines.

But in a heated exchange with Bost and other commissioners, Frady pointed out that the county receives a 10 percent surcharge on the cities' fines, and argued that the surcharge more than makes up for the cost of housing misdemeanor offenders.

"I think it's fair and equal to continue this agreement at this time," he said. "If this money should run out, then we should charge the cities."

He said the surcharge has provided $136,000 so far this fiscal year, which ends in June, though about $11,000 of that is repayment from prior years. Even so, collections are on track to meet the budgeted amount of $211,000 for the year, he said.

And $1.12 million from the surcharge is already waiting in a jail fund, he added.

This week, he said, he is asking commissioners to consider the fact that, although ending the 1993 agreement will allow the county to charge per diem fees to house city prisoners, the cities also will be under no obligation to renew the surcharge.

"They're going to quit giving it to us, there's no question about that," he said.

The surcharge has been placed in a fund for construction of the new jail, Bost argued last week. In the meantime, the county is having to pay $45 a day to house 50 prisoners in a Union City facility, and will need to recoup some of that cost in the two years it will take to build the new jail.

Frady shot back that, although the surcharge has gone into the construction fund, there's nothing in the agreement that stipulates that it should. In the final analysis, the surcharge effectively reimburses the county for the cost of city prisoners, he said. "We're getting the 10 percent and I think it's worked out very well this way. I think this [ending the agreement] is personally uncalled for," he said.

"It's a hostile thing to do," he told The Citizen this week.

Commissioners Linda Wells and Greg Dunn argued that the surcharge money will be absorbed just in the additional cost of running the new jail. More personnel will be needed for the larger facility, they said.

But Frady said this week he has been told that if they choose, there is a way that city courts can send their minor offenders through State Court, avoiding both any per diem fees and the surcharge.

"This is not going to accomplish anything," he said. "We really need to reconsider it."