By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU, Maine — Aroostook County’s jail budget has been consistently underfunded for a half decade, but the current situation is even worse than previous years: with an $800,000 shortfall and a Maine Board of Corrections that can’t make its traditional “kicker payment” that keeps the jail running, the Aroostook County Commissioners are looking to the Maine State Legislature for funding. The County will deplete its jail funding in March, but County Administrator Doug Beaulieu assured that the county commissioners have tentatively agreed to borrow the money needed to keep the jail open and operational.
“We’re working now so that we can obtain the money through the legislature, so we can pay back the bank and get through the fiscal year — that’s the immediate goal,” Beaulieu said on Feb. 13.
Beaulieu has a unique perspective on the underfunded budget, as he’s one of nine members serving on Maine’s Board of Corrections. Originally, Beaulieu had hopes that he could help avoid the annual budgetary shortfalls for the Aroostook County Jail when he first joined the BOC in 2011, but that hasn’t been the case.
“It’s been pretty frustrating as you see, because we’re now at a point where again, our budget has been underfunded for the current fiscal year — in fact we’ve been underfunded for the last five years running — and the way that the board of corrections seeks to address that is to give us what they call ‘kicker payments’ at the end of the year to make us whole,” he explained. “The scenario doesn’t change and the problem right now is the BOC is truly broke, and there’s no money for Aroostook County at the end of the year; if it’s not secured through the Maine Legislature this legislative session, we are in big trouble.”
His three-year term concludes this October, and Beaulieu’s already stated that he’s not looking to be reappointed.
In the short term, the best-case scenario for the County Jail would be for lawmakers to approve an $800,000 appropriation to fill the budgetary shortfall.
In the long term, Beaulieu explained, “the goal is to have a system that is properly funded and maintained.”
The County Commissioners and Beaulieu are working on both of those goals, enlisting the help of Aroostook’s legislative delegation.
“Rep. Tyler Clark (R-Easton) has helped us immensely this week in Appropriations, and other legislators are working hard beind the scenes to really help us,” Beaulieu said.
While Aroostook County’s correctional facility has been chronically underfunded, the jails aren’t getting any less crowded — but officials have found a way to increase the jail’s in-house population.
“We’ve brought up our population in-house from 72, to 81, to 86 and our goal is 105 so we don’t have to board anything above 72 in other counties — and that’s good because it helps us build the road to self-sufficiency as it relates to our jail,” Beaulieu said. “Now we just need the funding to follow that.”
Beaulieu credited Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte’s leadership as well as the leadership at the Aroostook County Jail staff in realizing ways to safely increase the population.
The next meeting of the Aroostook County Commissioners takes place at 4:30 p.m. tonight in the Sheriff’s Office Building in Houlton.
