There are few situations that involve prisoners in the Wright County Jail that can be viewed as a "win-win," but the Sentence-to-Service program has been one of them. Not only does the county save tens of thousands of dollars by putting trustee prisoners to work on county projects, it saves tens of thousands more in jail costs. For every day a prisoner works on the STS work crew, he gets a day taken off of his sentence, which Wright County court administrator Mike MacMillan said has resulted in more requests from prisoners to be on the STS crew than there are positions available. The question facing the Wright County Board of Commissioners at its Tuesday, April 20, meeting was whether the county would be willing to increase its funding for the STS program. The matter came to the board only after the State Legislature informed counties that it was going to discontinue its half of the funding for the program. The board saw department heads representing court services, jail administration, the sheriff’s office and the county attorney’s office in their unanimous support of increasing the funding for the program, which would be approximately $10,000 more than was budgeted. Sheriff Gary Miller said that the STS program initially was scheduled for complete termination of funding, but after an outpouring of opposition from sheriff’s departments, county attorneys and the Association of Minnesota Counties, the Legislature decided to reinstate half of its funding rather than completely cut it out. Chopping block "That program was completely on the chopping block," Miller said. "It was only the work of several associations and groups like AMC that stepped up and helped save it from being completely cut off the list." The cut in funding is the latest step in the state’s attempt to balance its budget. One of the ongoing problems counties face is that the state budgets run from July 1 to June 30, while county budgets run on the calendar year. That disparity has hurt counties over the last couple of years as state budget cuts are made after counties have long since set their budgets. Chief Deputy Joe Hagerty told the board that cuts to the STS program are problematic, but the value of the program is worth spending the additional $10,000 to keep. "The sheriff’s department is looking to keep this program going," said Hagerty, who added the additional cost would be covered this year through the sheriff’s budget. "The benefit of this program has been significant to the county." The commissioners agreed that the need for the STS program is there, but they struggled with having to pay more to keep a program devised by the state operational when the state has bailed out as a cost-saving measure. "I don’t get how this is supposed to work," commissioner Pat Sawatzke said. "They’re giving us less money and charging us more to run their programs. Who came up with that math?" The board unanimously approved allowing an additional $9,800 to be allocated to fund the STS program for the rest of 2010. The future of the STS program is murky at best – the current contract runs through June 2011, but with no state funding, anything beyond the end of this year is up in the air. Something has to give The board will discuss the matter during the 2011 budget sessions this summer, but, like other state programs that have been forced onto counties to administer, the commissioners continue to be fed up with the policy of the state balancing its budgets on the backs of cities and counties and, eventually, something will have to give. "I fully support this program because we’ve got a lot of good projects done by using it," commissioner Jack Russek said. "My problem is that we keep bailing out the state without any questions. I’m against the state’s policy of cutting funding to programs yet expecting them to remain in place, but I strongly support this program and hope we will find a way to continue it into the future."
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