As Maine's county jails continue to face budget woes and uncertainty, one proposal has been roundly rejected by Lincoln County officials.

Responding to Maine State Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte, the Lincoln County Commissioners and sheriff said Ponte’s plan to convert control of county jails to the state level is short-sighted and potentially disastrous at the local level.

Sheriff Todd Brackett, speaking before the Lincoln County Commissioners on Tuesday, Feb. 18 said the plan, which was proposed by Ponte earlier in the month, probably would save money in the short term but would hurt the county in the long-haul.

“The temptation is to look at the savings up front, but you need to look one year, two years, five years into the future to see what the true cost is,” he said. “The counties have been doing a good job since the 1700s; there's a reason jails are designed to be local.”

But, it wouldn't just be the jail or the county that would bear the brunt: it would also fall upon the inmates, Brackett said. He said the programs, namely those that combat addiction and recidivism would go away in the name of saving money.

“My fear is that all the programmatic work we've done to cut down on recidivism would go away,” he said. “The big fear there is they would just turn it into a warehouse system, where they turn the key and say 'See you when your sentence is over.'”

County Admininstrator John O'Connell said the cost to send local prisoners all over the state would add up, and quickly.

“I can not imagine what a state-run county jail would be like,” he said. “I imagine it would be a nightmare.”

O'Connell said that should the county have to send its inmates up to 50 miles away, the costs would “bulge out elsewhere and the damage will be deferred.”