In the 128th Legislature, there are several bills proposed that may affect Two Bridges Regional Jail, as well as local taxpayers in Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties. Many of the bills would relieve some of the jail's historical financial heartburn.

An Act to Improve the Funding of County Jails

From the time TBRJ was constructed to be a flagship jail, it has accepted inmates from overcrowded jails as well as prisoners from the federal and state prisons. Initially, those inmates and prisoners were accepted on a per diem basis, which ranged over the years. Typically, the cost was between $60-$75 per night, which wasn't enough, but the jail could live with it. According to then-administrator Mark Westrum, the real cost per inmate to house them at TBRJ was about $118 per night, which would include staffing, overhead, medical care, and other necessities.

As a receiving jail, Two Bridges was often at the mercy of other counties' financial problems. Several counties that would have sent inmates to TBRJ to deal with their own overcrowding issues or the fact that they didn't have a full-service jail were not able to increase their own property taxes beyond a spending cap imposed in 2015.

One of the jail bills in this legislative session, “An Act To Improve the Funding of County Jails,” permits counties to lift the spending cap imposed by LD 1 in 2015 to pay for county jails. LD 463 would remove the three percent spending cap for all corrections spending except for county jail debt. This bill, if passed and funded, would permit counties to increase spending for the jails, and for TBRJ particularly, would permit sending jails to increase their spending caps to pay a greater per diem rate to TBRJ. If passed, the rate local taxpayers would have to spend on the jail would likely decrease as the jail brought in more revenue and more inmates from other counties. Another part of this measure allows for receiving jails to collect a per diem fee, something that was abolished in the 2016 Bureau of Corrections elimination bill. There is no limit to the per diem rate in LD 463. TBRJ got around this prohibition by entering into long-term contracts with Waldo, Kennebec, and Oxford Counties instead.

An Act Regarding Community Corrections Funds

In addition to property taxes from Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties, the state also paid a sum to keep prisoners who would have otherwise been housed in state prisons in the county jails. The jails could already allow inmates to serve sentences of less than six months in the county system, but a new setup allowed jails to take on inmates up to nine months, with the state paying the difference between the six-month cost and the nine-month cost. However, judges began sentencing inmates to consecutive sentences, which would require the counties to pay the first six months of each sentence, a cost they might have to absorb numerous times for the same inmate. This program, the Community Corrections Act, kept the jails from becoming bankrupted later, but still caused a hardship to the facilities that was never fully appreciated by the Board of Corrections, Lincoln County Sheriff Todd Brackett said.

A bill is being considered that would require the Department of Corrections to create a new fund within its department for Community Corrections. LD 1490, “An Act Regarding Community Corrections Funds,” would appropriate $5,646,561 each in 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 to pay for the housing of what would have been state prisoners in the county jails.

An Act Regarding the Transportation of Prisoners to County Jails

Sending jails also had difficulty arranging for transportation for inmates, especially when the the jails were quite far apart. Due to TBRJ's location, fairly far from the interstate, it could take several hours to bring inmates from a far-flung county and return, a drain on municipal or county resources to pay for overtime or gas.

Another bill, “An Act Regarding the Transportation of Prisoners to County Jails,” LD 101, removes this barrier from outlying jails from sending inmates to Two Bridges. This bill, if enacted and funded, would take two percent of all fines, forfeitures, and penalties statewide, and set them aside to be used as funds for transporting an inmate from one jail to another, or from the scene of the arrest to a jail.

An Act to Transfer Operations and Ownership of County Jail Facilities to the State

In 2008, during the Baldacci administration, the jail was part of a consolidation move that brought the county jails into the Bureau of Corrections. The BOC believed that overhead should not be part of the calculations, and set the per diem marginal rate very low – about $23 per night – which was expected to cover the additional cost of staffing if the staff ratio needed to be bumped, as well as food and clothing. Medical care at that point was paid for separately if needed.

Two Bridges decided the fee the BOC was prepared to pay was not enough to make ends meet, and stopped accepting inmates at that rate. But that meant the jail had a lot of extra space, and other jails continued to be overcrowded. Exacerbating the situation were changes to some of the jails that turned them into 36-hour holding locations, or halfway houses, or other missions that prevented them from providing ordinary jail services.

A third bill, LD 1266, “An Act To Transfer Operations and Ownership of County Jail Facilities to the State,” would transfer all county jails to the Department of Corrections by 2020. The counties would remit property taxes for the jail to the state, and the state would assume all operational responsibilities for the jails ever afterward. The program is like the consolidation plan under the Bureau of Corrections that the jail had been living with from 2008 to 2016, with a few important differences, including that the state, not the counties, would keep track of the costs and needs, and would advocate for the jails' funding at a state level, not at a county level. Brackett said he believed the bill wouldn't go far, but that it was put forward by Sen. Bill Diamond (D-Windham) to keep the conversation alive. “I'm not in favor of this,” Brackett said. “But it keeps the discussion going at a state level about what it costs to fund local jails. We still have to solve the jail issue. It's still broken.”

Mental Health and Drug Treatment Acts

Brackett was in favor of several other bills that would establish pilot programs in various county jails for opioid treatment and mental health treatment. York, Cumberland and Washington counties are slated for the pilot programs. “Those programs will provide needed beds, even to Two Bridges inmates,” he said. The two programs in York and Cumberland counties are LD 377 and LD 839, respectively, and, according to Brackett, one of those jails is where drug-affected TBRJ inmates would likely be sent. But if another bill, LD 966, passes, some of TBRJ's mental health problems may be able to be treated at Two Bridges, according to the bill’s summary.

LD 966, “An Act To Create Mental Health Liaison Positions in Each County Jail”. If passed, the law would require a private behavioral and mental health professional to be stationed in each jail, to connect inmates to services. Those who are nonviolent inmates charged or convicted of a class D or E misdemeanor would be diverted to community mental health services; others would be served in jail. This bill was referred to the Health and Human Services Committee.

If these bills pass and are funded, they will make significant inroads into replacing funding that used to come from the state and was no longer available, or was bundled into a form that didn't benefit TBRJ because it wasn't overcrowded. From 2008 to 2016, the Two Bridges Regional Jail Authority did a hiring freeze and other efforts to keep operational costs down, including forgoing capital improvements and cutting programs. In the process, many officers were lost, much of the administrative staff was let go, and many of the programs that had made Two Bridges a model jail to begin with, ended. In March, the jail provided its correctional officers and other workers with long-awaited across-the-board pay increases, and  acting Administrator James Bailey said he is hopeful the raises will increase both the number of applicants and the tenure of the staff in the months to come.