By Brian Wright | Maricopa Monitor
Supervisor Steve Miller called it the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Whatever one calls it, it’s an issue that will dictate Pinal County’s
future.
At a Board of Supervisors work session Wednesday, Miller, of Casa Grande, said the county needs to sell the Pinal County jail in order to fix its budgetary woes.
Budget projections show dwindling reserves for the county’s general fund over the next three years.
A contract the county signed in 2006 with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, which houses immigrant detainees in the jail,
has already cost the county millions, and Miller said having the jail run by a private company is the best way to avoid financial ruin.
“If we were to unload that jail, we could (save) $8 million a year,” he said. Statistics provided by Miller show $22,353,000 in net expenditures for the county to run the jail for fiscal year 2012-13, and an estimated cost of $13,567,050 to have a private company operate the facility, which would equal potential savings of nearly $8.8 million.
Assistant County Manager Leo Lew told the Maricopa Monitor last February (he was budget director at the time) that between 2009 and 2013, the contract cost the county roughly $12 million, and that didn’t include about $3.5 million in annual debt service payments attributable to a jail expansion.
Last May, ICE agreed to renegotiate the contract, but those negotiations have not reached a resolution.
Sheriff Paul Babeu, unsurprisingly, was outraged by Miller’s suggestion.
“The law states that the sheriff shall maintain the care (and) custody of the county jail,” he said.
