Article published March 24, 2007

Powers sends state bill for holding prisoners

ROBERT W. DALTON, Staff Writer

Larry Powers says the weekly limits on the number of prisoners the state will accept into its prisons are taking a toll on jails across South Carolina. Now, Powers is asking the state to pay up.

Powers, director of the Spartanburg County jail, last week sent a bill for more than $65,000 to Department of Corrections Director Jon Ozmint, money he says the county is owed for expenses associated with housing state inmates.

"I don't know what else to do," Powers said. "We've been extremely short-staffed, and we've got people working double shifts, and having no place to move them (the prisoners) is compounding the problem."

Ozmint said he is working to resolve the issue. Sending the county $65,000, though, isn't part of the solution.

"I have no authority to pay that bill, so I'm not going to be paying it," Ozmint said.

Ozmint said he implemented the quotas on Jan. 1 as a way to level the playing field for jails across the state. He said some counties already had limits on the number of prisoners they could send to the state each week while others, such as Spartanburg and Greenville, did not.

"I had to deal with it; I couldn't say we were going to keep doing things the way they had always been done," Ozmint said. "Counties that have limits were finding out that all counties weren't being treated the same because of political favors and agreements made long ago."

Spartanburg County can transfer 16 men and three women weekly. As of Friday afternoon, 29 inmates were awaiting transfer, and the DOC said it would accept 24 next week.

The quota system has added to the jail's over

crowding problem, Powers said. Currently, 899 inmates are housed in a facility with a rated capacity of 586. The population reached a high of 908 -- the most Powers has seen in almost 25 years on the job -- in the nearly four months since the limits were imposed.

In his letter, Powers questioned Ozmint's authority to unilaterally implement the quotas.

"Such authority resides solely within the elected legislature," Powers wrote. "You are an appointed official who has no authority to promulgate rules or regulations outside of your own department and who has no authority to raise or impose monetary assessments or penalties on the governing bodies of the 46 counties of this state either individually or collectively as a whole."

Ozmint said he not only has the authority to establish the quotas, he has the duty. He said Powers was basing his argument on one piece of the law.

"If you read one statute in isolation and are not aware of all the legal requirements, you think it's simple," he said. "Before I'm going to violate the law and put peoples' lives at risk … the highest court in the land would have to order me to do that, and to order me to do that, they would have to ignore a lot of law."

County Administrator Glenn Breed said the purpose of sending the letter and the invoice was to make Ozmint aware of the burden the quota was placing on the county.

"We wanted the Department of Corrections to get a clear picture of what is going on in Spartanburg County," Breed said.

Breed said he has yet to hear from Ozmint, even though the bill was sent last week.

Ozmint said he's "very close to a good solution," and that he hopes to have it ironed out soon.

The long-term solution is to build more space, something Ozmint doesn't see happening until there is a bond bill.

"We haven't built a new prison in 14 years," he said. "It's remarkable that we've maintained the peace as long as we have."

Robert W. Dalton can be reached at 562-7274 or bob.dalton@shj.com.