Brenda SowterJASPER, Tenn. – When Marion County administrators set out to establish a contract for the county jail’s medical director, they didn’t realize how complicated and slow the process would be.
Officials recently found that the county is in violation of state law by not having such a contract.
“We don’t have a contract [with the jail’s medical director],” County Mayor John Graham said in August. “We’ve never had one. In my view, we’re in violation [of state law] by not having one.”
Graham said he has been working with the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service to establish a draft for the contract.
“It’s extremely difficult once you start looking into how you hire a jail physician and have a contract with them,” he said. “It gets really tedious and pretty difficult.”