Community corrections director warns of funding shortfall, asks county for $285,000 to cover benefits

Bo, introduced for the director27s update, told the Judicial Resource Advisory Committee that state grant awards for community corrections have been reduced and local reserves are shrinking, and he asked county leaders for one-time help to cover benefits.

"I asked the council for $285,000 to cover the cost of all of the benefits for our home detention employees, our McDap employees, drug court employees, and pretrial services," Bo said during the meeting, describing the request as necessary to avoid draining project-income (PI) reserves.

Why it matters: Bo said the agency asked for $599,000 in a 2027 grant application to run community corrections but received the longstanding $362,000 award for home detention. He said drug-court funding was cut from $35,000 to $15,000 and that PI balances have been used to make up the gap. That combination, he said, threatens the program27s ability to pay wages and benefits without drawing down reserves.

Bo presented several figures to illustrate the strain: the PI balance fell from approximately $879,000 in 2022 to about $518,000 in 2026; annual PI spending exceeded collections in recent years (for example, PI spending of $417,000 in 2024 against PI collections of $289,000). He told the committee that rising wages and benefits are the primary drivers of the shortfall and that most clients remain on an older payment schedule so revenue effects from fee changes will emerge slowly over 122 years.

At the meeting Bo explained the grant math and household-level impact, using 2025 data as an example: "In 2025, we had 252 total participants in home detention. Of those 252, their average length of stay was 129 days ... At the $12 rate, that is $1,500. And at $15 a day, that number would jump to $1,900," he said, emphasizing how per-client revenue changes accumulate across the caseload.

Discussion and next steps: Committee members discussed whether filing fees or other statutory fee mechanisms could be tapped for local support but noted that case-filing fees are set by statute and cannot simply be changed locally. The chair and others also discussed a newly released Department of Corrections funding formula and said it lacked clarity; the committee agreed to share cost-savings data with state actors and to press the case for greater transparency.

Bo said he had written to council members and commissioners asking for assistance and framed the $285,000 request as a targeted ask to cover the county-share of employee benefits rather than ongoing operating subsidies. The committee did not take a formal vote on the request during the meeting; next steps were described as follow-up conversations between Bo, county budget staff and council members.

The meeting also recorded the committee27s procedural approval of the January and April minutes earlier in the session.