Kane panel: Jail budget is 'silliness'

Kane County Sheriff Pat Perez decried the problem publicly several times the past few months. It's even been a major topic in Perez' re-election campaign. County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay also publicly addressed the situation. And yet, the fact the county incurs hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for housing overflow inmates in jails outside the county but hasn't budgeted a penny for it since the new jail was built was news to the county board's finance committee Thursday.

Reality hit home when the $240,000 bill for that cost hit the committee. That total only covers December 2009 through September 2010. That still leaves two months in the budget year for the bill to increase.

“What was the operating budget at the beginning of the year for (prisoner) outplacement?” asked committee member John Fahy.

“Zero,” replied Finance Director Cheryl Pattelli.

“What does our next budget show for this?” asked committee member John Hoscheit.

“Zero,” Pattelli responded again.

The county board just passed its budget for 2011 at its last full meeting.

“It's silly to put zero in there,” Fahy said. “There's historical data there. To ask (Perez) to stay within a budget and the budget is zero, that's just silliness. It's a waste of everyone's time. Why would you give someone a zero budget when you know you're going to spend between $300,000 and $500,000 on it by the end of the year?”

That's when committee member Cathy Hurlbut expounded on a point made albeit more subtly by McConnaughay when asked about the unbudgeted expense about a month ago. Hurlbut said the sheriff received no money for the expense because board members who set that budget don't trust him to use the additional dollars for that specific expense.

“If we give the sheriff $300,00 in his budget, he can spend it any way he pleases,” Hurlbut said. “We're not going to put a dollar amount in a budget that could be spent somewhere else.”

Instead, there's been an unwritten agreement, Hurlbut said, that the cost would be covered out of contingency money on the back end when the true cost was known.

But Fahy, Hoscheit and committee member Ron Ford said that practice makes zero sense to them. All three suggested the county conduct a historical look at the costs for hosting inmates outside the county for the past five years and add it to the 2011 budget as soon as possible.

The request for money to cover this year's expense was approved to be paid out of the contingency fund.