CARIBOU, Maine — The possible abolishment of the state Board of Corrections was a topic of discussion at the Aroostook County Commissioners’ June 16 meeting.
Last Tuesday the Maine House passed LD 186 a bill that puts counties back in charge of their jails.
LD 186 gets rid of the state Board of Corrections (BOC). A law passed in 2007 put the BOC in control and consolidated the operations of the state’s 15 county jails.
“It’s been bad public policy,” Doug Beaulieu, Aroostook County administrator, said. “It sounded good, but it’s been bad public policy.”
According to Beaulieu, the Department of Corrections in 2007 had no bed space in their prison system, and they were looking for a way to utilize some county bed space.
“A problem that was faced at that point in time and then for whatever reason the need for bed space by the state moderated. They really no longer needed our county bed space and that issue went by the wayside for the most part, but at that point a state BOC had been established to oversee the operations and funding of the county jails so the damage was done,” he said.
The consolidation has put a strain on county jails by making them jump through extra hoops to get things done and by underfunding the jails.
“Aroostook County has never been properly funded. What invariably has happened is that we’ve been allowed to exceed our budget and then at the end of the year they give us a kicker payment. That’s getting very tenuous and a very dangerous scenario to rely on the state to get extra money. There will be the day when there’s no money,” Beaulieu said.
“If [LD 186] passes we’ll approve the budgets; right now the budgets for the county jails are approved by the board of corrections. We’ll get to go back to the old model of approving our budgets and being more accountable for the decisions that we make,” he explained.
Aroostook County’s 2016 jail budget, set around $4.2 million, is in a holding pattern to see if the bill passes Senate approval. Even if the bill goes through it’s at the mercy of Gov. Paul LePage, who some believe may veto it.
