At the Aug. 4 meeting of the Lincoln County Commissioners, what should have been a routine agenda item from County Treasurer Rick Newell prompted a longer-than-usual discussion.

The agenda item was the county’s application to the state for the Community Corrections Act (CCA) payment to Two Bridges Regional Jail. The commissioners were asked to approve the application, but it was unclear if the CCA money would be available because a new statute that creates other funding for jails is one of the 65 vetoes currently being reviewed by the state supreme court.

If the governor’s veto is upheld by the court, it is believed that this would be the last year that the jail would receive the more than $200,000 CCA payment.  

Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that funding for the board of corrections’ current year ended June 30, and the new statute dissolves the board as an entity.

Making a formal application for the funds might create problems down the road, because, as Lincoln County Sheriff Todd Brackett pointed out, “Once the application is in we don’t know what modifications, if any, might be needed later.”

Questions about the veto status and the state’s budget for the coming year are having an impact on other county corrections matters. Two thirds of the population at Two Bridges is awaiting trial and some prisoners have been waiting for more than a year. 

“The courts don’t have the budget for more judges, so trials can’t happen more frequently,” Brackett said. “That impacts the county budget because we have to pay for inmates’ days in jail pre-trial.”

In one extreme example, an inmate has been held at the jail for more than 400 days while awaiting a forensic evaluation at Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta before proceeding to trial. Because Riverview has no additional room, the inmate continues to stay at Two Bridges, with the county paying the cost.

“If the inmate was sentenced, the sentence would be to a state institution and the state would pay for that,” John O’Connell, county administrator, pointed out to the commissioners. “But as it is now, the county is paying the cost.”

“The expense of operating the corrections system at the county level is being distorted because of these expenses,” Commissioner William Blodgett said.

O’Connell agreed. “We (the county) are saving the state $3 million in boarding fees every year,” due to the long pre-trial detentions waiting for the state court system.

Blodgett expressed his hope that future sessions of the legislature will make changes to the laws that contribute to the pre-trial delays and add to the county’s expense.

“All these things have a fiscal impact on the county beyond our expense,” he said.