Cascade County officials began discussing the jail’s current revenue model and potential options to address funding shortfalls during a July 29 meeting.

The jail was constructed in 1998 with a long-term contract with the state as a regional prison holding about 150 state inmates.

The county has long used a revenue based model to fund the jail, meaning revenues from other state or federal agencies that pay for use of beds  cover the cost of operations beyond available tax revenue.

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It’s a model that is complicated by increasing expenses, potential for overcrowding, community concerns about federal contracts and ensuring space for local offenders.

It’s a model that needs review, Sheriff Jesse Slaughter had said needs reconsideration and the July 29 meeting was the first in that discussion.

Slaughter, Undersheriff Scott Van Dyken, commissioners and Trista Besich, county budget officer, briefly discussed legislative changes to state taxation and they they hadn’t heard updates from the Montana Department of Revenue.

Commissioner Joe Briggs said he expects more tax protests this year since many properties saw 30 percent increases and that the values are “artificial. The system is busted.”

He said he also expects issues in the following year since the lawmakers phased the changes over two years and that’s assuming the next Legislature doesn’t make further changes.

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Slaughter said that since COVID, expenses for contracts are outpacing the revenue they’re bringing in, which is roughly $10 million through contracts, in addition to about $4 million in tax revenue through the county.

He said that if the county were to drop its existing contracts or negotiate them down to fewer numbers of bed and laid off about half of the jail staff, CCSO would still be short about $5 million for jail operations.

Slaughter said the revenue model he inherited at the jail isn’t working and they “end up in a weird game, the only way we make it up is through revenues and vacancy savings.”

If the jail was fully staffed tomorrow, he said, the budget would be in the red.

“That is a terrible problem to deal with,” Slaughter said.

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They’re not breaking even on contracts, Slaughter said, since operational contracts including medical and food services are fixed.

In the case of food services, as the inmate population decreases, the cost per meal increases, Slaughter and Van Dyken said.

Slaughter said they could bring food service, which is currently contracted, in-house and have county kitchen workers with inmate workers and also provide meals for aging services and Meals on Wheels or something along those lines, for an estimated $1 million annually.

The state daily rate per inmate is $82, which is set in statute. The current U.S. Marshal contract pays $115 daily for federal holds at the county jail.

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The county is currently negotiating with the Marshals, hoping for a higher daily rate.

Slaughter said he hears all the time that the county should prioritize public safety and cut other services to fund it, but that would cut most other county services.

Slaughter said one options could be taking the jail down to 220 local arrests, but they’d always have some room for state and federal holds with the courthouse and for those awaiting transport after sentencing, so it could easily get away from them again.

The county launched a pre-trial program last fall that has about 80-100 people registered, Slaughter said, which is having a positive impact on the jail, but because expenses are so high, they have to fill those beds with revenue based inmates.

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The current booking remodel project is compounding some of the issues, Slaughter said, but they’re seeing a steady decline in the overall jail population.

Slaughter said the 2017 Justice Reinvestment Act that was an effort to reduce strain on the state prison system and changed what offenses carried jail time, created a situation where offenders were emboldened to commit more crimes as they didn’t face confinement.

He said lawmakers have reversed many of those policies.

Slaughter said that county sheriff’s can refuse intake of defendants in the county jail, but if a judge orders someone to jail and the sheriff refuses, the county has to pay to hold that person elsewhere.

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Some Montana sheriff’s won’t take state or federal holds, or strictly limits the space available to them, CCSO officials said.

Raising the issue to lawmakers is also challenging since not every county has a jail, Briggs said.

Van Dyken said there are 36 county jails in the state, with varying capacities.

He was in Deer Lodge last week for Bradley Crisman’s sentencing and said Powell County has a 28-bed facility that they like to keep around 10 inmates and have two detention offices.

Broadwater and Fergus counties fund their jails off state holds, Van Dyken said, in a similar revenue model to Cascade County.

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He said that Yellowstone, Missoula and Gallatin counties won’t take many or any state holds due to lack of room. The Yellowstone County has an average daily population of about 650 with 72 detention officers, Van Dyken said the sheriff there had told them, leaving about 10 beds for state holds.

Yellowstone County uses civilians to handle a lot of jail operations with higher pay to fill those positions, as Cascade County has trouble hiring detention officers, Van Dyken said.

Those incarcerated pre-trial lose access to health benefits and Van Dyken said that Missoula County was planning to introduce legislation to change that, but Briggs said versions of that bill had been introduced for the last seven years and not moved.

Slaughter said the county needs to develop a more sustainable funding model for the jail.

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He said some members of the public had recently suggested running a mill levy to make up the $10 million the county would lose by cutting federal contracts, to which officials in the room said wouldn’t pass.

Commissioner Joe Briggs said that the majority of the problem, in his opinion is the state system that doesn’t cover medical costs and “probation and parole uses us as a stacking ground, instead of doing their jobs.”

He said the benefit of federal contracts is the county’s ability to negotiate a rate and cover medical costs for those inmates.

District court is backed up, so Briggs said public defenders often make speedy trial arguments and those issues are outside the county’s control, leaving them with the federal contracts they can negotiate until they can get stability with state rates.

Slaughter said that the state office of public defenders have capped the number of cases those prosecutors can take, an option not available to county prosecutors.

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Briggs said that the state should also pick up the full cost of prosecutors if it’s paying defenders and that counties had already worked with the state several times before to establish a calculation for incarceration costs.

Commissioners asked what was the ideal jail population to plan around and Slaughter said, “you’re chasing a number you don’t know,” since jail populations fluctuate.

The county will also have to reset its public safety levy due to legislative changes this session.

Slaughter said he’d been told by local lawmakers that existing levies were grandfathered and not subject to the changes, to which Briggs said that was not true and “I don’t think a lot of legislators knew what they were voting on.”

Commissioners and Slaughter discussed educating the public on the realities of the jail and Briggs said he agreed but didn’t expect the public to approve a levy for jail funding.

Commissioner Eric Hinebauch said he wasn’t expecting the public to pass a levy, but wondered where else the revenue would come from.

Slaughter said he researched the private model for the jail, but that would likely cost the county more.

Slaughter said that for their next meeting in a month, CCSO staff would bring some cost savings ideas as well as the consequences for those cuts.