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Dan Staton, Multnomah County Sheriff, is moving forward with plans to staff suicide watch posts with cheaper employees.

(Brent Wojahn/ The Oregonian)

Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton is moving forward with his plan to save money by hiring lower-paid employees to watch over suicidal inmates at the county jail, despite pushback from the corrections deputies who currently do the job.

Staton’s plan is part of a larger ongoing effort to curb ballooning overtime costs in the county jail, where the sheriff repeatedly has breached his department’s overtime budget by millions of dollars.

Staton and county labor relations manager Jeff Heinrich notified the corrections deputies union Sept. 2 they intend to hire "facility security officers" whose sole job would be around-the-clock monitoring of inmates who corrections health workers have diagnosed as suicidal.

Staton and Heinrich acknowledged at the time that the union would likely fight to keep conducting suicide watch shifts, which generate “significant overtime wages” for corrections deputies.

“However,” the top managers wrote, “these same overtime costs have become prohibitive and MCSO must perform this critical function more efficiently.”

The union is fighting back. A week after Staton sent his notice, the union’s attorney filed a grievance against the plan and demanded to settle the matter at the bargaining table. Union lawyer Hank Kaplan argued that Staton’s plan to staff suicide watch posts with security officers violates multiple provisions of the corrections union’s contract.

The county “lacks justification” for the planned staffing change, he wrote, adding that there is no evidence such a change would actually save money.

The issue of overtime at the jail became contentious after the 2012-13 fiscal year, when Staton spent more than double the $3.57 million he had allotted for overtime. His department over-drafted its entire budget by more than $500,000 as a result, spurring the county board to closely monitor sheriff's spending.

Staton argues that suicide watch shifts account for much of the overtime cost. The shifts are unbudgeted and must be staffed whenever an inmate is classified as suicidal.

The most severe inmates are placed on “constant watch,” with a corrections deputy peering into their cell at all times, day and night. In recent years, sheriff’s officials say, the number of inmates on suicide watch at any given time has surged, causing overtime costs to rise.

During an interview in May, Staton estimated that staffing constant suicide watch positions with employees who earn less money than corrections officers could save his agency up to $1 million per year. At the time, he envisioned hiring certified nurse assistants to fill the post.

"This is very doable," he said in May. "It's sitting down and working the operational system and looking for a resource that is not as expensive."

The county board of commissioners would have to approve Staton’s plan before it could take effect.

Union leaders argue that handing the job off to workers who aren’t trained to deal with potentially violent situations puts added workload on the corrections officers who patrol the jail.

“Now, in addition to inmates, it’s going to be one more person the corrections officers are going to have to watch over,” Kaplan said.

Union president Cathy Gorton said her team presented Staton with several alternative proposals to could curb suicide watch costs without passing the job off to security officers.

“They’d rather give our jobs to somebody else,” she said.

Staton, relaying a message through a spokesman, declined to comment on the dispute.

Staton has yet to respond to the union’s demand to negotiate. The two sides need to resolve their differences by Dec. 1, or 90 days from when Staton and Heinrich notified the union of the suicide watch plan. After that, an arbiter could be called in to settle the matter.

--Kelly House