Legal News

Montco Courts Seek Waiver of Budget Cuts

By Brian Harris

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

After Montgomery County introduced a budget this week planning for a flat 5 percent cut for every county department, the county's common pleas court, district justices, drug court and correctional facility, among other justice agencies, sought waivers from the cut.

Commissioners James R. Matthews, Joseph M. Hoeffel and Bruce L. Castor seemed sympathetic today to court leaders as well as the county correctional officials seeking a waiver of the 5 percent cut.

The common pleas court is seeking a waiver of only part of the 5 percent cut, Court Administrator Michael Kehs said. The court said it could afford to cut its budget by $260,000, but not to cut the $700,000 that the 5 percent budget would call for. The court's budget is now $13.9 million.

Chief Adult Probation and Parole Officer Michael P. Gordon asked for a waiver because a 5 percent cut would require laying off eight officers and 2.5 support staff. American Probation and Parole Association standards call for probation and parole officers to only carry a caseload of 50 offenders, but Montgomery County's officers carry 128 offenders for every officer, Gordon said. Cutting eight officers would make the case load rise to 168 offenders per every officer, Gordon said.

There are 14,000 offenders supervised by the department, Gordon said. The department's budget is $1.53 million this year.

Montgomery Common Pleas Judge Steven T. O'Neill, the liaison judge to the probation department, said the department is using evidence-based practices such as house arrest to bring down the number of cases in ratio to the number of officers.

The commissioners also did not discuss the elimination of the drug court, which was a proposal on the table two years ago.

Common Pleas President Judge Richard B. Hodgson said that according to the most recent figures, there were 83 defendants participating in drug court who otherwise would have been in county lockup.
The drug court's budget is $585,000 this year.

District justice officials reported that under Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Court recommended guidelines, the department should have 144 employees to administer the county's district courts, but the office is asking for 135 employees in 2011. The district justice budget this year is $9.8 million.

A funding issue emerged for the county correctional facility during today's hearing. The department's proposed budget does not include the costs of a 512-bed, minimum-security facility that is going to be opening next year, Commissioner Julio Algarin said.

The addition will cost $1.8 million to operate every fiscal year, Algarin said.

Castor stressed that housing immigration detainees facing deportation by the federal government could cover the county cost of running the expansion. County Solicitor Barry Miller and Algarin said that the ability to house federal immigration detainees is dependent upon the success of getting more minimum-security inmates out on work release. The minimum-security facility can be used for work-release defendants, driving under the influence defendants and technical probation violators, Algarin said, but it can't be used for the federal detainees. If the number of work release inmates could be increased from 150 to 200, the viability of moving more of those inmates out of the current correctional facility to the minimum-security part would allow for the county to contract with the federal government for guarding detainees in the more secure part of the facility, Algarin said.

The correctional facility budget is $28.5 million this year.

More waiver hearings are scheduled for Tuesday, and the commissioners' decision on which departments will receive a waiver will come after the hearings. The Public Defender's Office and the District Attorney's Office still have their waiver hearings pending.

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on December 02, 2010 (boomark / email).