Housing and transporting federal inmates continues to cause budget challenges for the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff Jeff Richwine told the county council Tuesday that while the effort is making money for the county overall, the associated income and expenses are in two different parts of the county’s budget.
“There’s no way we’re losing money on these federal guys because they pay for the transportation, they pay the mileage, they pay more than what we pay jailers, so we’re always doing good,” he explained. “But what happened is we didn’t take into account the overtime to move these guys, and then that money’s not coming back into our funds. It’s going into the General Fund, so that’s why we’ve come up short on the jailer overtime pay.”
To make up the shortfall, council members agreed to transfer $11,000 from the Inmate Meals line item to Jailer Overtime. The county council also approved the sheriff’s requests to transfer $10,000 from Dispatch Salary to Equipment Repair and $1,600 from Part-Time Cooks into Sheriff Deputy Pay.
Richwine also asked for the council’s permission to use $2,855 out of his department’s Commissary Fund to reimburse Chief Jailer Stephen Tabler, after he was inadvertently placed in a lower pay level in the county’s salary matrix. “He’s not been in his proper spot,” Richwine explained. “He hasn’t taken into his account for his time.”
The sheriff also wasn’t sure if the issue was resolved in the 2019 budget, although Auditor Laura Wheeler thought it had been. Council members asked Wheeler to do more research into what adjustments may need to be made, before they take any action.
