Multnomah County public safety officials are concerned about $5.4 million in reduced state funding for community corrections and the resulting possibility of cuts to parole and probation staff, the loss of 73 jail beds and elimination of some treatment and other support programs for offenders.

The cuts, described by county leaders as unprecedented and devastating, could leave people convicted of crimes with less supervision or none at all once they’re released and could increase the number of offenders going to state prison, officials said.

“Every way you look at it, this is just insanity,’’ County Commissioner Lori Stegmann said Tuesday. “We’re working so diligently to reduce our jail population and this is the reward we get? It’s just unconscionable.’’

The county’s share of state money depends on a state formula based on the percentage of people supervised by the county for felony offenses. That population has dropped consistently since 2013 and the state’s funding for the county has followed that trend.

The formula stems from a law passed in 1995 that shifted responsibility to counties for offenders facing sentences of 12 months or less. In return for the counties holding these offenders in their jails or finding alternatives to jail, the state was to reimburse counties for the supervision expenses.

For Multnomah County, the state’s contribution fell from $54.1 million in the 2017-2019 fiscal biennium to $48.6 million for 2019-2021.

Yet the county’s inflationary costs and hours required for supervising offenders has gone up, said Erika Preuitt, director of the county’s Department of Community Justice.

County records also show that separate state money for the county’s Justice Reinvestment Project – a program to reduce the prison population -- also has dropped by $342,269.

The Board of Commissioners received an update on the funding woes and is expected to vote Thursday on how to readjust the county’s budget to absorb the loss.

Proposals on the table include cutting 19 full-time staff members in the Department of Community Justice’s Adult Services Division, which supervises about 12,000 offenders a year and tries to connect them to housing, substance abuse or mental health treatment and mentors while on supervision.

Other possibilities: reducing probation and parole officers, community justice managers and corrections counselors and closing a program that now provides cognitive-behavioral intervention and life skills training to offenders.

“It is very devastating to us, but we can only do our business with the resources that we have available,’’ Preuitt said.

Jail staff likely also will face cuts.

Seventy-three jail beds, representing a 6% reduction in county jail capacity, and seven full-time corrections officers could be affected, according to Sheriff Mike Reese. He has proposed closing one dormitory at Inverness Jail, reducing county jail beds to 1,119.

At that level, he said, the county would be at 95 percent capacity daily, requiring “significant” emergency releases of inmates from jail that would be “catastrophic’’ to the criminal justice system.

DROP IN FELONY OFFENDERS ON SUPERVISION

The drop in the county’s number of felony offenders on community supervision has resulted from several factors, county officials said. It’s partly due to some felony drug offenses, such as possession of controlled substances, changed to misdemeanors by state lawmakers.

It also has resulted from charging decisions by the District Attorney’s Office and that some people on court-ordered county supervision can be discharged from oversight halfway through if they’ve demonstrated success, Preuitt said.

Supervised felony offenders made up about 21 percent of the county’s supervision population in 2013-2015 and are projected to make up 18 percent in 2019-2021, Preiutt said

The county also is struggling to keep afloat its Justice Reinvestment Program, which serves offenders who are eligible for prison time but diverted to intensive supervision instead, said Abbey Stamp, executive director of the Local Public Safety Coordinating Council, which manages the program.

The county, Stamp said, has reduced prison intakes by 40 percent, resulting in savings for the state of more than $34.5 million over four years. But that money doesn’t carry over to the county level, Stamp said.

The county is considering reducing the Justice Reinvestment population it supervises from 1,200 a year to about 950 annually, she said. Those include offenders sentenced to a year or less in custody.

That means some of the offenders will now head to prison instead of the diversion program, she said. She estimated that 200 to 300 a year might no longer be eligible for the jail diversion program.

COUNTY SAYS STATE FAILED TO CONSIDER ITS COSTS

When adopting a budget for statewide community corrections, the state failed to consider the added time and cost it takes today of supervising an offender compared to years ago, county public safety officials said.

Lawmakers adopted a $268 million state community corrections budget for 2019-2021, a drop from the $273 million budget for 2017-19.

An Oregon Department of Corrections’ study in 2018, though, found a $50.9 million gap between state funding of community corrections and the cost to counties of providing the supervision, said Jeston Black, director of Multnomah County’s government relations.

The study showed that counties’ intake of new cases took an average of nearly three hours a month in 2017 compared to one hour a month in 2006, and the cost of supervising offenders averaged $14 a day in 2018, compared to $12 a day in 2011. That’s because the county is providing more services and more intensive intervention to offenders on supervision, county officials said.

The state Department of Corrections, by law, is required to conduct an actual cost study of community corrections every six years.

Its 2018 cost study noted the need for an additional $50 million above the current service level to cover the expense of the community corrections workload, said Gail Levario, a state corrections department spokeswoman.

"The Legislatively Adopted Budget did not include any portion of the cost study into the Community Corrections budget,'' Levario confirmed.

That’s despite meetings that state corrections department officials had with Gov. Kate Brown’s office, the legislative fiscal office, and county stakeholders about the results of the department’s cost study. State corrections officials also included the cost study in their budget presentation to state lawmakers this past session, Levario said.

The governor believes community corrections needs to be "more transparent’' about the services offered before more funding is provided, said Kate Kondayen, the governor’s deputy communications director.

"Governor Brown believes that community corrections is an important part of our state’s criminal justice infrastructure,'' Kondayen said in an email late Tuesday. "In order to get the Legislature’s support, there needs to be more transparency in the community corrections budget so that Oregonians can better understand the services they provide and the costs that go into providing them. Any additional funding for community corrections should be evidence-based and require measurement of outcomes for greater accountability. ''

Multnomah County’s government relations director blamed the chaos of this year’s legislative session and the death of state Sen. Jackie Winters, a strong advocate for prison and jail alternatives, for the legislature’s failure to account for the added costs.

The funding drop also is affecting Washington, Clackamas and Marion counties.

Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said the board and others are lobbying the governor’s office and state officials to restore some of the community corrections money during the 2020 legislative session. They’re also looking for alternatives to lessen the impact before Thursday’s board vote.

Her message: “OK, state Legislature, these cuts are on you.’’

“They saw good results so they instantly cut the funding, which is exactly the wrong thing to do,’’ she said. “We can’t continue to do business as usual. We just don’t have the funding.’’

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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