Associated Press
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky’s chief justice says proposed budget cuts would mean some 17,000 defendants could have to go back to county jails because there would be no officers to supervise them while they are awaiting trial.
That’s just part of the projected fallout from a 9 percent budget cut over the next two years that Chief Justice John Minton told lawmakers would likely cause 600 people to lose their jobs. The cuts would only affect non-elected positions, so judges and circuit court clerks wouldn’t be affected.
But Minton said several programs that judges and public safety officials rely on to keep jail populations low could be gutted. That includes Kentucky’s drug court, a program where low-level drug offenders are closely monitored and treated instead of being put to jail. If the program closed, some 2,500 participants would either have to go to jail or be supervised by a probation and parole officer.
“I’m done with being cool and calm and collected,” Minton told members of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee on Monday, including Senate President Pro Tem David Givens of Greenburg. “The hair that I have left, Mr. President, is on fire.”
Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo defended the cuts, arguing they protected Minton from the 4.5 percent cuts in the current year that the governor had proposed. He noted lawmakers applied the same cuts to the legislature’s budget, although that budget is much smaller than the judicial branch.
“It’s the same thing we have to live with in the legislative branch,” Stumbo said. “There is some concern, quite frankly, that ... what the judges are really upset about is the language that says they can’t have a pay raise.”
Eliminating or reducing the pretrial services program would have the largest impact on local governments. In Louisville, the state’s largest city, the court system has pretrial officers working 24 hours a day to handle the 33,000 people who are booked every year. The jail system has 1,793 beds. Director Mark Bolton said the jails book between 90 and 100 people each day. Most of them get screened by a pretrial officer and released.
“If that was to go away, we don’t have anywhere near enough bed space to accommodate that. We would be in big trouble,” he said. “It creates safety issues, it creates liability. ... It would be just a disaster. It’s myopic to think that this would be OK.”
Bolton said Louisville’s inmate population on Monday was 1,950, or 157 more than the system has beds. Local jails across the state house some convicted felons through a contract with the state. But the jails have gotten so overcrowded that the House budget proposal includes language that would let the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet to move more than 2,300 inmates to private prisons “if the overpopulation exposes the Commonwealth to litigation.”
It cost the state about $32 per day to house an inmate in a county jail. It cost $55 per day to house an inmate in a private jail. Justice Secretary John Tilley told lawmakers such a move could cost the state $20 million.
“It takes a lot of discretion away from our ability to manage,” Tilley said.
Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel, the chairman of the Senate budget committee, would not commit to granting Minton’s request on Monday, but said “we’re certainly looking at everything we can do to help the chief right now.”
McDaniel said the Senate likely will not vote on a budget proposal until Wednesday. House and Senate lawmakers would have until Tuesday to work out their differences before sending a final proposal to the governor’s desk.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press