by Cheryl Splain, KnoxPages.com reporter
MOUNT VERNON — Council members adopted legislation on Monday evening that authorizes the city’s safety-service director to enter into a contract with the county to house prisoners in the Knox County Jail for 2014. The contract amount remains to be negotiated.
Prisoners convicted of or who are awaiting trial on charges of misdemeanor violations of the city’s codified ordinances are housed in the Knox County Jail. The city has the option to charge individuals under city ordinances or state statutes. Currently the city charges them under city ordinances because the city receives the fines collected in municipal court on these cases. Several council members agree it is time to rethink this policy.
If violators are charged under state statutes, the city receives no fine money, nor does it have to pay for housing. In 2013, the city paid the Board of Knox County Commissioners $318,154.50 to house violators; municipal court fines collected totaled $134,693.41. According to numbers compiled by City Auditor Terry Scott, for the years 2004 through 2013, the amount paid to the county is slightly over $1 million more than the amount received in municipal fines. Scott said that Interim Police Chief George Hartz said charging violators under state statutes rather than city ordinances would not significantly affect Mount Vernon police officers.
In a Nov. 25 meeting between the Knox County Commissioners and City Council, the commissioners asked council to consider paying more in support of the Office of Public Defender and the county Emergency Management Agency, although they specified no numbers. The city currently pays $20,000 and $6,000, respectively. The public defender contract calls for the city to pay $22,000 in 2014. In return for the increased support, the commissioners said they would forego an increase in the jail contract.
The city funds less than 10 percent of the public defender’s office; city cases account for 50 percent of the caseload but only 25 percent of the workload. If the city were to pay 25 percent of the budget in accordance with its portion of the workload, the city would pay about $55,500.
State law requires the public defender’s office to enter into an agreement with a municipality to provide counsel for indigent individuals charged under municipal ordinances. Scott said that if violators were charged under state statutes, the percentage of city cases in the public defender’s office would diminish. He told council that all appropriations for the public defender’s office are made by the county commissioners; council has no jurisdiction, nor is council involved in setting the compensation level of the staff in the public defender’s office. Bringing the compensation of the public defenders in line with attorneys in the county prosecutor’s office is the reason given by the commissioners when they asked for an increase in the amount of city support.
Chip McConville, city law director, said the difference between city and state statutes is fairly minimal other than in areas where council has an ordinance not touched on by state statute. Examples include an adult aiding and abetting curfew violations, zoning violations and the synthetic drug ordinance recently passed by council. These violators would still be charged under city ordinances; in this case, the city would pay a per diem rate of $60 a day to house the violator in the Knox County Jail. In cases where jail time is part of a potential sentence, the violator has a right to counsel through the public defender’s office.
Council waived the required three readings of the resolution and adopted it because the resolution simply authorizes the safety-service director to enter into the contract; the details can be worked out later. Councilwoman Nancy Vail voted against waiving the three readings and adopting the resolution. “I felt we need to wait until we have a budget meeting,” she said.
