Commissioner, political challenger and sheriff set for Chattooga County jail debate

Chattooga County, Ga., Commissioner Jason Winters is on track to spend more than half a million dollars this year sending local inmates to other counties.

From January through May, according to records obtained by the Times Free Press, Chattooga County sent $208,000 to the jails of Bartow and Polk counties. That’s because the Chattooga County Jail is too small to house all its inmates, a problem county commissioners there have been unable to solve for more than three decades.

Winters’ solution? Fill the Chattooga County Jail with more inmates, according to an article in The Summerville News. But his opponent in the upcoming election, Jimmy Holbrook, believes that plan isn’t practical. The county needs to build a bigger jail, he said, and the commissioner needs to begin working out the details.

The $500,000 that the county is on pace to pay Bartow and Polk counties represents about 3.5 percent of the county’s total budget. But Holbrook said the spending is emblematic of a larger problem with Winters’ leadership: poor planning.

In this year’s budget, Winters allocated $200,000 to housing inmates – the total spent in Bartow and Polk counties in the first five months of the year. The amount does not include money spent housing inmates here in Chattooga County.

“We have to be preparing for the inevitable day that we will have to build a jail,” Holbrook said. “We’re not doing that.”

“If we build that jail,” Winters countered, “property taxes will increase, and I’m not for that. I don’t want to place this burden on county taxpayers.”

Winters, who did not respond to multiple calls from the Times Free Press but shared his thoughts with The Summerville News, challenged Holbrook to a debate on the issue. He challenged Sheriff Mark Schrader, too. And so the three of them will gather for a forum at 8 p.m. Thursday. It will be aired in the county on local Sky 21 TV.

Schrader said he hopes to stay out of the crossfire between the two candidates.

“I don’t really plan on being involved in a debate,” he said. “But I will be there with numbers [about the jail].”

Decades-old problem

Winters believes Schrader is sending too many inmates to other counties.

“It is a major cost,” Winters said, “but it is an issue he has control over. Mr. Holbrook needs to be asking Sheriff Schrader why we are not housing more inmates here.”

Schrader, however, said he doesn’t have much of a choice.

In 1981, a group of inmates filed a class-action lawsuit against the county, claiming the jail was not a humane place to live. U.S. District Court Judge Harold Murphy agreed, filing a consent decree against the county in December 1984. Among other issues, he mandated that inmates get proper meals and access to attorneys.

He also put a cap on the number of inmates the jail can hold: 47, unless there is an emergency. In those rare cases, Murphy ruled, the county could bump its inmate count up to 57. But he also put another limit on jail population: Chattooga County can’t hold the maximum 47 inmates for more than 20 days in a row.

As is, Schrader said he can now hold 51 inmates because changes to the jail since then have allowed for a couple more beds.

But Winters believes the sheriff has even more wiggle room than that. The county can boost the population, assuming it has the resources and space to feed more inmates, Winters said he has been told. But a copy of the consent decree provided to the Times Free Press did not contain that clause. Schrader said he has also reviewed the document several times and doesn’t see a loophole, either.

At any rate, the county’s deputies have consistently arrested more people than the jail can handle – at least since 2008, according to figures provided by the sheriff’s office. On four out of every five days during that time period, the county had more than 80 inmates. That includes those who went to Bartow and Polk counties.

If the county plays with the numbers more, Holbrook said, another group of inmates might file a lawsuit.

“It’s going to come back and bite us when we get sued and we have to build a new jail,” he said. “At that point, we’ll have to raise property taxes.”

How much money are we talking?

Ultimately, this fight between the commission candidates is about dollars and cents.

Holbrook said $200,000 paid to house inmates elsewhere is a problem because Chattooga County is short on money. The Polk County sheriff told Holbrook in a letter that Winters has not paid bills on these outside inmates since April. From May through July, according to invoices, Chattooga County owes another $31,000.

Winters also can’t make payments to Bartow County right now, according to an email from the Bartow County administrator to its sheriff. It’s not clear how much money Chattooga County needs to pay, but Winters told the administrator he would catch up on payments in October.

Winters said it’s common for the county to need to borrow money in the late summer before collecting more property tax revenue. Holbrook disagrees.

“The commissioner is unable to pay the bills,” he said. “That’s the biggest issue the county is facing.”

Still, Winters said, all this money flowing to these other counties is peanuts compared to what Chattooga County would have to pay to build a new jail. After receiving an estimate from an architecture firm for a 225-bed jail, Winters believes the county would have to spend $14 million on a jail.

Catoosa County Financial Officer Carl Henson said local government there paid significantly less when it constructed a new jail with sales tax money from 1999-03: About $6 million.

Winters also said it would cost more money to take care of a bigger jail because the county would need to hire more employees. He pointed to White County, Ga., which opened a new jail in April 2012. Winters said the county had to pay an extra $1 million to operate the building, though a clerk for the county said the cost actually increased by $200,000.

If elected, Holbrook said he doesn’t know when the county would build a new jail. But he wants to begin planning. He said he would pursue paying for it with sales tax revenue or with a bond. Either way, he said, he would put the issue on a referendum for voters before making a move.

There is another option, Winters has pointed out in the past. The sheriff’s office could release more inmates from the jail, tracking them with ankle monitors.

Schrader said this isn’t up to him: A judge would make that decision. He said the county already releases all misdemeanor offenders without a bond, reducing the potential jail population.

But, he added, a large percentage of the inmates are actually there because they violated parole or a probation. He didn’t have the raw numbers on that data Tuesday.

“It’s just not as nice and easy as you would think,” Schrader said of Winters’ suggestion.

Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.