Casa Grande Dispatch
It sounded like a win-win deal for Pinal County in 2004: a $62 million expansion of the county jail with federal contracts paying all the cost. Then-County Manager Stan Griffis, who negotiated contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said bond costs would be covered in total by the federal payments made for keeping prisoners in Florence to make any of the payments, totaling $3.5 million a year. This means that during some lean years for the county and its taxpayers and employees, they were subsidizing the cost of housing federal detainees.
Griffis, who later served prison time for stealing from the county, never was known as a weak negotiator. The problem seems to be mainly one of lack of effective monitoring once the arrangement was put into effect, perhaps affected by personnel changes over the years.
Former county officials were universal as they responded to interviews: They said they had no way of knowing what the problem was. And it speaks to the weakness of county government under the Arizona Constitution. Various elected officials have their different mandated functions, and making those work in harmony often is a challenge. The sheriff is responsible for operating the jail, but the Board of Supervisors controls the budget.
Behring, who works for the board, has been on the job two years and ordered the audit a while ago. He said he had never in 25 years of experience seen such a large contract that had not been monitored for effectiveness.
His task now is to attempt to renegotiate the daily rate for housing federal prisoners, from $59.64 to about $75 or $80. He believes that may happen soon, after a federal freeze is lifted. The audit also found that pay rates at the jail are higher than in comparable facilities in the state. Although the feds obviously enjoyed a relatively low price for housing the prisoners here, the usage rate has been well below capacity.
The moral of this story is that anything that seems too good to be true probably isn’t. And that county officials must monitor every major expenditure, even though there is no specific requirement to do so.
