By VICKI URBANIK

The state’s decision to yank its offenders from the Porter County Jail appears to have helped resolve overcrowded conditions at the jail, but it remains to be seen what the financial fall out will be.

Porter County Sheriff Dave Lain said that effective at the end of 2007, the Indiana Department of Corrections stopped sending its inmates to the county jail. He said the DOC’s move was not surprising, since the state for some time has warned that the overcrowded conditions could force it to send its prisoners elsewhere.

Lain said he’s now crunching the numbers to determine if the jail will have a shortfall this year, now that it’s no longer getting the $35 per offender daily payment from the state. The jail has typically averaged 80 to 90 DOC offenders each day, which translates to roughly $1 million annually in state payments.

The state’s decision to stop sending DOC inmates to Porter County does not affect the federal prisoners housed at the county jail. Through a contractual agreement with the U.S. Marshal, the county gets $40 per day for each federal prisoner. The jail has been averaging about 40 federal inmates daily, Lain said.

Lain characterized the loss of the state prisoner fees as a hurdle that the county will deal with. “We’ll get through this,” he said. “As they say, stay tuned.”

Porter County Council President Robert Poparad, D-1st, said the jail will likely have enough in its budget to get through most of this year. The council will probably need to consider an additional appropriation sometime late in the year, he said.

“It’s not a crisis,” he said.

Lain said the loss of the DOC prisoners has eased up on the crowded conditions, making the jail run more efficiently. “I think it is a safer facility. We are not as overtaxed as we once were,” he said.

In turn, the jail will save money in prisoner food, bedding and other expenses. Further, he said he is no longer pushing to add more jailers, as he did last year, since the need now is not as critical.

Instead, Lain raised concerns about funding the police portion of his budget, noting that the recent decision to abolish compensatory time will boost his need for overtime pay.

Lain said the loss of the state prisoner fees highlights the problem with the jail ever since it opened in the mid-1990s: The county has relied on the state and federal fees to staff the jail, and has chronically fallen short.

Lain said if former Sheriff Dave Reynolds had not secured the state and federal agreements for their prisoners, the county probably would have been able to fund only one of the three jail pods. With the state and federal fees, it’s been able to open the jail’s second pod. But there has never been enough money to open the third pod.

“We’ve had too many inmates and not enough staff. That has always been the crux of the problem,” he said. “It’s always, always about money.”

Lain noted that his department has been trying to move jail personnel out of the fee-based fund and into the county’s main general fund, but hasn’t had much success.

“The general fund was not prepared to take on the necessary shift,” he said.

Lain said his department has long felt that personnel costs should not be funded out of a source that one may dry up. Sooner or later, he said, the county will need all of the 350 beds in the two pods for just Porter County inmates and ultimately, the full 450 beds in the three pods.

The jail currently has 49 staffers. At its peak, the jail inmate population has reached 500 or so.

Lain said he respects the DOC Commissioner and understands why he pulled the DOC prisoners: So many inmates have been forced to sleep on temporary beds while an entire third pod remained unused due to a lack of staff.

During budget hearings last year, Lain requested four new jailers but was shot down. Lain said even if those jailers were approved, it would not have been enough to open the jail’s third pod. There’s “no question” that opening the third pod would have been the only way for the DOC to keep its prisoners in Porter County.

Poparad said he does not think the county council will be apt to provide the staffing needed to open the jail’s third pod. “The balloon has burst,” he said, referring to the state DOC fees. “So let it burst.”

Posted 2/8/2008