The Two Bridges Regional Jail Authority on June 15 chose a path it had never chosen before. It voted to give itself a budget more than $100,000 in the red.

The Jail Authority found itself between a rock and a hard place when Administrator Mark Westrum was asked about the fact that TBRJ had not been granted any of the $2.4 million in emergency funding approved by the Maine State Legislature in May.

“We were able to meet our budget, or just about, and the state was granting monies to people who were unable to pay their bills,” he said.

But the jail had met its obligations by some very hard choices — the layoffs of four employees and the freezing of several security positions that Westrum said are critical to the jail's accreditation.

“We were told in our last audit that we did not have enough personnel in the jail,” he said. “We haven't been able to hire enough people that stick around, and four of our corrections guard positions are still frozen.”

Sheriff Joel Merry of Sagadahoc County asked if that was based on the 180 per night inmate count that had been common in the last fiscal year, or the 120 per night count that has typified this year's count.

“Whether it's 180 people in the jail or 120 people, we're still understaffed,” Westrum replied. “We're not meeting the Department of Corrections' staffing plan for 120 inmates.”

Sheriff Todd Brackett said, “In my opinion, it makes no sense to make a budget where we know we could be unaccredited.”

“At our last inspection, the DOC questioned our staffing plan quite a bit,” Westrum added.

Westrum said that after hiring four new people this spring, four other people left for various reasons, leaving them exactly where they were. “The work is hard and the pay is marginal,” he said. A newly hired corrections guard at the jail earns $15.30 per hour. With benefits and deductions, it costs $55,238 to bring on one jail guard. However, other jails are paying more, and many officers are drawn away to fill positions at other jails that can pay more as soon as they have a little experience.

Even if all the newly hired guards were to stay, the jail would still be understaffed because certain correction officer positions were frozen during a budget crisis last fall. In addition, most of Westrum's administrative staffers were laid off at the same time, and he has been informed that because of severance packages for those employees, he can't hire anyone to replace them, even if funding were available, until October.

Brackett said that there has to be some sort of legislative attention to the problem. “The only reason we had any surplus at all last year is because of the responsible actions taken by Mark and the finance committee,” he said, referring to the cost-cutting measures.

Brackett was firmly in favor of budgeting for the frozen positions, even though that would lead to a deficit budget. Because the jail has been unable to hire and retain workers, the funds would largely be on paper. In May, the Authority had agreed to unfreeze two of the positions.

At the June meeting, they agreed to unfreeze the other two, leaving a deficit of $110,476. It is the hope of the Authority that budgeting for the positions, even if they are not filled immediately, will solve the pending crisis with the Department of Corrections inspection, expected in September.

Further, Brackett said he hoped that the deficit funding would trigger funding from the state for Two Bridges. “We need to be able to show the state that we need more funding than we have,” he said.

The Authority voted to accept the deficit budget, 7-3, with one abstention.

Even though the budget is in deficit, it will be months before a new class of officers can be brought on board, and there are still several positions open, so it is unlikely that the jail will run out of funds before the end of the 2017 fiscal year.

 Westrum said that he had hoped a deal with Knox County would have been in place by now. “If we knew what we could expect from Knox County, we'd be able to budget better,” he said. “But they're not sure what they're doing yet, so we just have to wait.”