County officials are working on the sheriff’s office budget that accounts for a possible contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, crisis response, STD testing and absorbing the disaster and emergency services office.

During a May 19 discussion, Sheriff Jesse Slaughter and Undersheriff Scott Van Dyken worked through their budget and potential changes with Commissioners Jim Larson and Eric Hinebauch, as well as Trista Besich, county finance director.

CCSO is the lead agency on a Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services grant to revive the mobile response team program and establish a crisis diversion center.

Van Dyken said that the state hospital isn’t functioning properly so the state has been pushing grants in the hopes of community based services for mental health and addition.

The county sends people to the state hospital at Warm Springs for mental health evaluations and/or treatment in criminal proceedings and civil commitments through another process.

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He’s planning to apply for funding through a $6.5 million grant program DPHHS opened at the end of April.

Slaughter said that state legislators said they have issues at the state hospital and that Gov. Greg Gianforte thinks mental health services need to be pushed out to communities.

Currently, the county sends people to the state hospital, but once the hospital releases them, there’s no further accountability or monitoring by those providers and those people often end up right back in the criminal justice system, Slaughter said.

He said the community based model seems to be the direction the state is moving, but that could change or be ineffective.

“We have to try because it’s such a problem,” Slaughter said.

Van Dyken said the county will have to partner with local agencies to make it work.

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Besich, the county finance officer and former executive officer of Alluvion Health, said that’s the challenge with crisis response programs.

Depending on the provider, reimbursement rates through Medicaid can vary widely.

Van Dyken said they’re working on that statewide so that local agencies can bill Medicaid for crisis response services to help fund the program since grants aren’t sustaining.

Besich said that the state funding toward mental health came from a budget surplus a few years ago. The state is divvying that funding, some to the state hospital, some through statewide targeted committees and some directly to local agencies through the grants.

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She said one of the ideas was enhancing community based services, but not all insurance companies cover those services or reimburse at the same rates.

“It’s just not there yet,” Besich said.

Van Dyken said he’s planning to apply for the new grant funds toward the crisis diversion center that’s being developed on the second floor of the Indian Family Health Center.

Slaughter said they’re trying to avoid the Cascade County Adult Detention Center serving as a default holding place for those with mental illnesses.

There are people on the street who can’t go jail, he said, because they’ve already been deemed unfit to stand trial.

Local law enforcement officials have said in multiple public settings and in interviews with The Electric that jail is often not the best place for someone suffering a mental illness or addiction, but it’s often the default for behavioral issues that cause problems in the community caused or exacerbated by lack of treatment.

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“We can’t just constantly be a revolving door,” Slaughter said.

Another potential budget factor this year is ICE detention holds.

Slaughter said he’s in talks with ICE officials for a potential contract at a higher daily reimbursement rate than the state pays.

Initially, Slaughter said he’d rejected the idea due to the booking area remodel construction, but found out the state would transport some of their holds to other facilities making room for ICE holds, which would improve CCSO jail revenues.

The Montana Department of Corrections had asked Slaughter if he’d take ICE holds and would move their inmates to help make room.

The state daily reimbursement rate is $82 and the federal rate is around $135, he said.

Hinebauch asked how long the ICE detentions would last in local facilities.

Slaughter saids at least the next four years.

“They’re just looking for places to hold them,” Slaughter said.

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He said the governor had mandated counties to support the ICE mission and current operations are “gonna jump ICE detainees way up.”

Slaughter said ICE will first conduct an inspection of the county jail to ensure feasibility and then they’ll work toward a contract. He said the county’s contract with the U.S. Marshals Service is also up for negotiation this year.

Slaughter told commissioners has previously held ICE holds under the Marshals contract and there haven’t been many ICE holds in the past.

He said he wouldn’t allow the jail to fill up with ICE holds, but they could replace the existing state holds.

On May 19, Slaughter said they rarely go under 120 federal holds under the Marshals contract and that day they had 133.

He said the new county pre-trial program was helping bring down the jail population, but the challenge was those being brought to jail on low level misdemeanors with mental illness since they take more staff time.

CCSO is also in talks with the Town of Cascade over their law enforcement contract.

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The town indicated in a recent meeting that they didn’t want to accept the cost increase in the contract and were considering hiring their own police officers.

Van Dyken said that over the last decade, they’re costs had doubled and that’s reflected in the increased contract price.

The current contract expires June 30 and is $67,638.32.

Slaughter said the town was required to provide law enforcement services and both Cascade and Belt contract with CCSO for those services.

Slaughter said that House Bill 333, which was passed by lawmakers this year and recently signed by Gianforte allows CCSO to invoice towns like Cascade for providing services if they don’t have a contract.

If they disagree on the cost, the dispute goes to arbitration, Slaughter said, and “it’s a pretty good bill.”

Cascade officials said the draft contract includes an increase of about $20,000.

Van Dyken said that he and Slaughter have explained to the town officials that if they were to hire a town police officer at $25 an hour, that’s about $70,000, not including a patrol car, insurance, radios or a records system.

Because of federal requirements, an officer also needs certain certifications to enter warrants into the system.

A portable radio runs about $8,000 and the mobile systems in their patrol cars cost about $9,000, he said.

The town would then also have to pay for a repeater to talk on the radios.

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Those costs would be more than $100,000, Slaughter said.

“So we’re losing money on it,” Hinebauch asked of the Cascade contract, to which both Slaughter and Van Dyken said yes.

Another potential budget driver for the upcoming year will be STD testing in the jail.

The City-County Health Department used to do that testing weekly at the jail, but the county didn’t get the grant that formerly covered those costs.

Van Dyken said CCSO will have to purchase those tests and it’s an estimated $20,000 to $30,000 per year.

He said inmates will tell medical staff they need an STD test and if the jail bills for the test, they’ll refuse it and spread the diseases, so local medical staff and health professionals are recommending providing the test for free.

If an outside agency does the testing, that entity can bill for the service, but Van Dyken said that would require transportation and if an inmate isn’t out of CCSO custody for 24 hours, the county still has to pay for the testing.

“It could be a problem in our community if we don’t do it,” Van Dyken said.

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Slaughter also asked commissioners to think about the option to hire paid reserve deputies, which are allowed under a recently approved state law.

The reserve deputies are compensated but don’t receive benefits like a full-time deputy, he said.

It’s something he’s considering using to support school safety, which would be a “huge force multiplier in public safety,” but will need to develop a structured program.

CCSO is also absorbing the county DES office this year.

During the May 19 meeting, they discussed where and when that move would occur.

They’re planning to move DES, with just a manager position, into the CCSO building on the hill across from the airport on July 1.

Van Dyken said he wasn’t concerned about space availability at the CCSO building, but they’ll need to determine the square footage being used for their federal grants and budgets.

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The move cuts an administrative assistant position and another 0.15 position they said during the budget meeting.

The shift will also require commissioners to adopt a resolution, similar to how they shifted election duties under the commission last year.

The county has a contract for Code Red, which has been under DES, and Van Dyken said that expires this year.

He said the company will do a bridge contract to their new system for free for three months while the county works out details for a new contract with an estimated annual cost of $12,000.

Code Red is widely used by the county, but also Great Falls Fire Rescue and Great Falls Police Department.

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Van Dyken said they’ll need to look at sharing those costs with the city since the county can’t keep absorbing that cost.

He said they could consider using a similar formula to dispatch fees the city charges and offset those costs.

“No matter what it is, they should pay their share,” Larson said.

The group also discussed a plan to better track deputy positions since there’d been a discrepancy between departments as to how many deputies CCSO was authorized this year, eventually relying on an email thread amongst CCSO, human resources and commissioners from July 2023 to check their math.

There was confusion over how some positions shifted, some of which occurred when CCSO absorbed the constable position, and what had been approved.

Besich said they needed a more structured process to avoid the issue in the future and Van Dyken suggested including a line to denote whether the position needs  a vehicle since they’re assigned to some within CCSO.

The group called Jeff Mora, county human resources director, into the meeting to discuss how to track the number of positions.

Mora said it’s operational for CCSO but HR was having a hard time tracking the positions.

Staff said they could have a conversation about it, to which Hinebauch said they needed a paper trail.

“We need to formalize that,” Hinebauch said.

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It’s easier to account for those changes when the budget is being developed rather than mid-year changes, Mora said.

Slaughter said the county should have a policy and process for tracking positions rather than sending an email to HR, which could have typos or mistakes.

Besich said she’d build a form that would be used to add or subtract deputy positions.

Van Dyken suggested a similar process for rank changes within CCSO since they come with pay differences.