Kane County justice system adds to riverboat grant pressures

Kane County's justice system added a second budget deficit Wednesday for county board officials to wrestle with before 2017 arrives.

Riverboat gambling cash available to fund county programs is at a new low. But the costs for some of the county's most promoted justice programs continues to rise.

The county board's riverboat committee faced 20 program funding requests totaling $3.79 million Wednesday. That clashed with a riverboat grant budget of $2.78 million. That $1 million funding problem adds to the $5.7 million deficit the county board already faces in the county's overall 2017 budget.

Like that larger budget, the justice system programs are the largest drivers of the deficit for the riverboat gambling budget. Half the top 10 most expensive riverboat grant requests relate to programs in the state's attorney's or sheriff's office.

Riverboat committee members focused many of their questions Wednesday on a $178,000 request by Sheriff Don Kramer. The money would fund a pilot program to link 40 jail inmates with local mental health service providers. The idea is to reduce the pool of 578 people who rotate in and out of the jail because of underlying mental health problems.

Committee members bucked at the idea of adding a new program that would rely on the dwindling riverboat funds every year. Kramer said the program could represent cost savings by lowering the jail population. With that in mind, committee member Bill Lenert asked if Kramer would slash $200,000 from his non-riverboat budget request to help balance the ledger.

"I think that would be dangerous," Kramer said. "There are a lot of fixed costs with the jail. To judge this program by the end of the year, or nine months into the project, would be pretty difficult."

Mental health isn't achieved overnight, Kramer said. The program, if successful, would realize cost savings three to five years into the future.

Committee members made some headway in trimming the requests to about $3.37 million. Unspent riverboat grant money allocated to county departments last year will address some of the remaining deficit.

One other option is to dip further into the riverboat grant reserve funds. Committee Chairman John Hoscheit said he wants to avoid that. The reserve account will drop to about $4.64 million by the end of 2017 even if committee solves the riverboat deficit problem. That would be an all-time low.