Problem with the press

Ran across a KXXV story on the Sheriff budget fiasco.

http://www.kxxv.com/global/story.asp?s=17269809

 

From the story:
The McLennan Co. Commissioners Court approved a $285,000 budget amendment today..

Wrong, it was a $385,000 budget amendment.
(Click image to enlarge)

However, after already blowing through their $1 million budget for the fiscal year, the sheriff's office expects they will need even more money very soon.

Randy and Larry did not only blow through their budget, the bill received was actually $1.3 million spent in the first 5 months of the budget year. They got a bill for $385,000 more than they had in the budget.

Unfortunately for the county, the CEC nor the sheriff's office has any idea when the downtown jail will be ready to pass the Texas Commission on Jail Standards inspection.

So the old jail has been vacant since June 2010. I think it is reasonable to expect something more than “don’t have any idea” when they have had almost two years.

"I think [Reyna's] doing a great job," said McLennan Co. Commissioner Kelly Snell. "At the same time we have a downtown jail and I don't think that would've been much of an issue had the downtown jail been open. We could've accepted the inmates."

 

Snell took office in 2009. What has he been doing to address the downtown jail since he voted to transfer the inmates out in June 2010?

For a temporary budget relief the commissioners say they plan to work with county judges to hold certain classifications of inmates for 24 hours, as opposed to 72 hours.

It should be noted the District Attorney told Commissioners he was aggressively pursuing cases because when he was in private practice, people awaiting trial would commit new crimes while out on bond. One, he noted, managed to amass a list of 9 new crimes while awaiting trial. After the District Attorney explained that, they want to get people out of jail faster.  (Link to story with audio)

Tax Payer money and plenty of it

Reviewing the agenda for next Tuesday, I ran across an interesting budget amendment request.

At first glance, this request for $385,020.00 purports be due to an increase in the number of county prisoners housed elsewhere due to overcrowding. All taxpayers should be shocked that a one million dollar budget could be missed by more than 30%.

It gets worse

McLennan County documents are cryptic at best. It appears from the second page of the agenda item, the money was spent as of 3-13-2012. Expenses incurred were $385,020.00 over budget as of a WEEK before the Commissioners’ Court is scheduled to address the issue.

Another question

Of possibly greater concern is the fact that the above ledger does not reflect any expenditures for October or November. The county fiscal year begins October 1.

And the big question

If the total for the first half of the fiscal year is $1.38M, what are they going to do for the remainder of the year? Note the invoice dates above only reflect through 3/13/2012.

The rub

Looking at the documents above, is there any doubt who is paying for the new jail? The above figures are tax payer funds.