CORBIN — By Ronnie Ellis / CNHI News Writer

County officials Thursday called a provision in the House state budget plan “a threat to public safety” because of a cost-savings measure to reduce the number of non-violent, non-sexual offenders behind bars.

Most of those prisoners are held in county jails and the state pays counties a daily rate to house them. Many counties use that money to subsidize jail operations which typically provide a major drain on county general fund budgets.

The House budget anticipates saving $30 million in corrections costs over two years by capping the prison population at its present total and releasing at least 1,000 Class D felons. Many are already eligible for parole once they complete substance abuse counseling but are on a waiting list for those services.

Last week, Bobby Waits, Shelby County Jailer and President of the Kentucky Jailers Association, said the plan doesn’t save money – it only shifts the cost from the state to the jails where many of the targeted prisoners are housed.

The Jailers’ Association, the Kentucky Association of County Officials (KACo), the Kentucky Magistrates and Commissioners Association, and the Kentucky County Judges/Executives Association sent a memo to lawmakers asking the provision be removed from the budget.

Denny Nunnelley, executive director of KACo, said the cost to counties could be as much as $20 million a year.

“That’s a guesstimate because it’s hard to determine how many and when they will be released,” Nunnelley said.

The bill has already passed the House and is now before the state Senate which is likely to make changes in the over all budget plan. The county officials are working Senators to get them to change the provision about inmate populations.

Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, wouldn’t say what the Senate might do about the provision, but he said he had previously told county officials that any reduction in the number of Class D felons – the lowest felony level – would impact jails.

Barren County Judge/Executive Davie Greer said she thinks the Senate will change the provision before a final budget is approved. “We’ll have to wait a few more days before we panic,” she said. The county is ready to break ground on an $8.4 million, 198-bed jail to replace its crumbling 119-bed facility which the state has on numerous occasions threatened to close. While she said the county can pay for the jail without more state inmates, those revenues would ease the cost. Her biggest concern is what happens to those released under the budget provision.

“We’ll just be re-arresting them and then they’ll be county prisoners and we’ll have to be the one to foot the bill,” Greer said.

House budget chairman Rick Rand, D-Bedford, said county officials should have voiced their concerns when the House publicly discussed for weeks the provision prior to passing the budget.

Nunnelley was asked why the counties had waited so long to speak out.

“We didn’t know it was coming,” Nunnelley said. “We couldn’t react until we saw the budget Tuesday night and then we went to work.”

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said Thursday there’s never been a guarantee the state would house its prisoners in county jails and pay them for the service. Many jails, he said, weren’t constructed to house state prisoners, although some counties have built new jails with the expectation of paying off debt costs through the state reimbursement for an increased number of state prisoners.

Rand also said many counties’ jails would be “backfilled” with new prisoners – though that seems to go against the budget expectation of keeping the total prisoner count at current levels. But Stumbo said as Class Ds are released, the state could use prison beds to house federal prisoners and receive higher federal per diem payments. They could do that, he said, by placing Class Ds in state facilities in local jails.

Bottom line, Rand said, is the state has no choice to reduce the burgeoning costs of its prisons in a recession during which the state faces a $1.3 billion shortfall.

“We’ve obviously got to make some reductions in corrections,” he said. “But we’ll have to make adjustments to (the plan) as we go along.”

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.