By R.J. RICO, Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — People on probation and parole in Louisiana would see the monthly fees they are required to pay increase by $37 under a measure pushed by lawmakers who want to increase parole officers' salaries, and criticized by those who say it would hinder a bipartisan push to lower prison recidivism rates.

Hoping to decrease high turnover rates among parole officers, a Senate judiciary committee voted 3-1 Tuesday to increase a monthly fee from $63 to $100. The fee hike would only apply to people with jobs — about 50 percent of the population, said probation and parole officer Francisco Dean.

The bill by Republican Rep. Lance Harris, of Alexandria, has received House backing. It goes next to the Senate Finance Committee.

Dean said parole officers are already overburdened and will face 6,000 to 7,000 more cases if lawmakers pass a series of measures to increase the number of offenders who receive probation or parole. Gov. John Bel Edwards last week announced a compromise with district attorneys, increasing the likelihood that legislators will approve the proposals. Under the compromise, much of the expanded access to parole and probation would not apply to sex offenders or violent offenders.

"We can't do (this extra work) with a 40 percent turnover rate," Dean said. "We can't do it with vacancies. We can't do it driving '99 Crown Victorias with 200,000 miles on the vehicles. We need this (raise)."

Sen. Karen Carter Peterson opposed the bill, saying it would unfairly increase parolees' financial burdens and make them more likely to reoffend. The New Orleans Democrat said lawmakers should end the "hypocrisy" of refusing to use Louisiana's budget to secure pay raises for parole officers.

"I 100 percent agree that you are being underpaid right now and that you deserve to be paid more, but I disagree with the mechanism," Peterson told the approximately two dozen parole officers who attended the meeting. "Instead of finding a recurring source of revenue where you can get a raise every year ... we're finding this quick fix."

Lawmakers should not be relying on people who are already struggling to reassimilate in society, said Bruce Reilly, deputy director for Voice of the Experienced, a New Orleans-based nonprofit that supports those who have been incarcerated before.

"This session we've been talking a lot about how people can get stability," Reilly said. "This is the one bill that will make life harder for people. ... Some people will go back to prison because there is just one more straw on the camel's back."

The fees would raise about $926,500 for officers annually, the Louisiana Legislative Fiscal Office has estimated. Dean said that estimate is too low, and he and his colleagues believe the fee hike would raise as much as $5 million.

There are currently about 470 parole officers in the state and 40 openings, Dean said. If $926,500 was split evenly among 510 officers, each employee would receive a raise of about $1,800. Parole officers have not received merit-based raises since 2008, Dean said.

The bill had initially called for the fee hikes to go toward the "recruiting and retention" of probation and parole officers, but Democratic Sen. Gregory Tarver of Shreveport passed an amendment to specify that the fees be used for salary increases.

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House Bill 302: www.legis.la.gov