By Chris Green
Rockford Register Star, Ill.
ROCKFORD, Ill. — County Board Chairman Frank Haney and Sheriff Gary Caruana have reached an agreement to hire 10 corrections officers at the Winnebago County Jail at a cost of $350,000.
The sheriff will request a budget amendment next week at a joint meeting of the Finance and Public Safety committees. If the committees approve, the request will go before the full board the following week.
Haney said the money — enough to fund the salaries of the corrections officers until the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 — would most likely come out of reserve funds.
The agreement is viewed as a short-term solution to address excessive and prolonged lockdowns in the jail, which began shortly after the sheriff laid off 10 corrections officers as well as 64 reserve deputies and other employees late last year after the County Board cut his fiscal year 2018 budget by $4.3 million.
“We’re going to try to bring them back as quickly as we can,” Caruana said Monday, referring to the 10 correctional officers.
As of Friday, 64 claims of “excessive and unwarranted lockdowns” had been filed in Winnebago County Court, according to Circuit Clerk Tom Klein. Recently, corrections officers have been working more overtime hours to reduce the periods of lockdowns. Overtime hours rose 142 percent in January as lockdown hours dropped 58 percent compared with December.
Even if the board approves the hiring of the 10 officers, “There’s going to be some overtime because we are still down, but at least we are alleviating the problem of lockdowns,” Caruana said. The jail’s daily inmate population has risen by 20 percent since it opened in 2007, while the number of corrections officers dropped by 22 percent, a state inspection noted last month.
Since Oct. 1, Caruana has cut $2.5 million from his budget. He and Haney anticipate future budgets will be passed that cut the sheriff’s budget incrementally to reach the desired $4.3 million reduction.
The chairman and sheriff met for several hours last week and discussed a wide range of short- and long-term issues facing the county.
The two men agreed to a series of long-term accountability and transparency initiatives, which include a countywide efficiency study, creation of a budget review team, and operational reviews of multiple county departments, including the sheriff’s and chairman’s departments, followed by a report to the County Board and public on the findings.
“We are taking on short-term tactical challenges while also laying the groundwork for long-term structural reforms that will help ensure fiscal responsibility and strategic alignment of resources,” Haney said.
©2018 Rockford Register Star, Ill.