October 22, 2003

Inmates boarded to cut budget gap

By Brendan Scott
Times Herald-Record

Goshen – Thanks to overcrowding at county jails throughout the state, Orange County Executive Edward Diana and Sheriff Carl DuBois expect to cut a $1.8 million budget gap in half by year's end.

The deficit stems from a dramatic shortfall this year in revenue the county had hoped to gain by boarding inmates for the federal government and other New York counties.

Several factors, including a transition in the leadership of the sheriff's office and repairs to Orange County Jail's malfunctioning heating system, delayed settlement of a key federal contract.

That meant the county never realized more than $1 million it budgeted this year for housing immigration detainees and short-term federal inmates.

"Maybe it was too optimistic at that point," Diana said. "But we'll be OK for next year. We'll have a shortfall. But it won't be anything like we thought it was going to be."

In all, DuBois hopes to trim the shortfall to less than $800,000. Overall, Diana is struggling to trim a $28 million county budget deficit.

In an attempt to reduce the sheriff's share of that, DuBois has stepped up efforts to market the county's 778-bed jail to bed-strapped jails from Essex to Suffolk counties

The Orange County Jail averages 500 inmates a day. Of those, 85 inmates are boarders from counties such as Ulster, Greene and Dutchess, which pay $125 a day per inmate.

Jail Administrator Dominick Orsino said he has negotiated a preliminary deal with Suffolk and expects 28 inmates to arrive from there later this week.

Meanwhile, the first inmate from the delayed contract with the U.S. Marshals Service was expected to arrive yesterday. The deal, signed Sept. 16, pays $95 a day per inmate, although the county is trying to renegotiate that figure, said Chief Deputy Larry Nevins of the Marshals Office in White Plains.

The marshal agreement opens the door to numerous other federal agencies, particularly the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which is dealing with an explosion in long-term detainees after Sept. 11.

County officials say the jump in boarders will have no impact on safety or the expense of running the county's "direct-supervision" jail, in which one officer supervises 55 cells, whether they're occupied or not.

All the boarding agreements allow the county to refuse any inmate that might disrupt jail operations, DuBois said.