Published: September 30, 2008 11:13 pm      

County and city fight over jail cost

Meridian declares state of emergency in order to move expelled prisoners

Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie prepared to expel municipal prisoners from the county jail Tuesday after the city refused a contract to house municipal prisoners there at an increased rate of $30 per prisoner per day. The previous rate was $23.

"They (the county) had months to notify us of re-negotiation of the jail contract and waited until the last two weeks of the month to even mention any notion of change in the contract," Meridian Mayor John Robert Smith said at a city council meeting Tuesday.

The city had asked the county for a 30 day extension on the contract, which expired today, in order to negotiate a price. The county informed the city by letter Tuesday that they would not grant an extension or negotiate the price, and that a failure to accept the contract would result in expulsion of municipal prisoners from the county jail as of midnight Oct. 1.

Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie said that state law required him to expel the prisoners if no contract was reached.

Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors President Ray Boswell said of Smith and the city council: "They have not been willing to work with us" on the contract negotiations. Smith said the same thing of the board of supervisors.

Boswell called Smith and the council "wrong people" at a meeting Tuesday and said they needed to be "grown ups" about the negotiation.

"Saying 'It was $23, now it's $30, that's it,' is not negotiation. That's demand. In fact it's almost demand at gun point because they waited this long," Smith said.

District 3 Supervisor Craig Hitt defended the city's request for an extension saying to Boswell, "I'm just telling you what the council members told me, that the contract that was put before them they approved."

The council said they were sent a jail contract with the $23 rate, which they approved last month.

Smith found a way around the county's demand, advising the city council to declare a state of emergency, which he and attorney Ronnie Walton said would allow the council to authorize Chief of Police Benny DuBose to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with Newton County Sheriff Jackie Knight to house municipal prisoners in the Newton County jail beginning Oct. 3. Newton County reportedly said they need until then to make ample room in their jail.

The council voted 4-0 to declare a state of emergency and authorize DuBose to enter into the agreement.

As for what to do with municipal prisoners between now and Friday, Smith said that all but one of the city prisoners in the county jail were there on contempt of court, and that the municipal court would act quickly on Tuesday to arrange payment plans so that they could be released. The one prisoner who was not there on contempt of court, Smith said, would be sent to a hearing in which he would be remanded over to the county, becoming a county prisoner.

Smith said that the county jail housed 39 prisoners Tuesday, Sollie said it housed 45.

Smith said the city would continue to hold preliminary hearings every day. "We will begin to move our long term prisoners over to Newton County on Oct. 3," he said.

People arrested for misdemeanors, DuBose said, would be held for 12 hours at the Meridian Police Department until they could bond out. Anyone arrested for a violent crime, he said, could be held in one of a few cells currently available in Newton.

"If someone, God forbid, shoots somebody tonight, we'd have them on investigative hold, we could take them over to Newton County," DuBose said.

Newton County, Smith said, will charge Meridian $20 a day for each prisoner housed there.

An Attorney General's opinion given to Clarke County Sheriff Todd Kemp stated that an interlocal agreement must be reached between a municipality and a county's board of supervisors before municipal prisoners can be housed at a county jail. The opinion, dated March 17, 2006, specifically referred to a possible agreement between Clarke County and the City of Meridian.

However, declaring a state of emergency may present a way around reaching an immediate interlocal agreement. "If you declare a sate of emergency," Walton advised the council, "you have the authority to look elsewhere... You don't have any other alternative to protect the safety of the city of Meridian."

Meridian Chief Administrative Officer Ken Storms said he was displeased with the county's attempt to raise jail prices because city residents pay county taxes.

"The taxpayers that you represent are already paying 52 percent of all the expenses associated with the jail," he told the council.

"They're treating one group of county taxpayers differently because of where they live," said Smith. "I think that is fundamentally wrong."