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Jail fingerprinting agreement in limbo

County commissioners are surprised that deputies do not oversee fingerprinting at the Hernando County Jail.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published June 14, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Four months after the County Commission approved it, Hernando deputies are still no closer to taking over fingerprinting operations at the Hernando County Jail.

No one can explain why.

On Feb. 14, the commission voted to enact a number of changes at the troubled jail, including assigning six deputies to run the LiveScan digital fingerprint machine.

The $305,000 annual cost would be deducted from the county's payments to Corrections Corporation of America, the company that runs the jail.

But this hasn't happened, despite the fact that the sheriff, the County Commission and CCA all agreed to it.

The lack of action has surprised some commissioners.

"I thought, to be quite honest, that we would have already been down that road," said Commissioner Robert Schenck. "That's definitely something our staff needs to get to work on."

"My recollection is that CCA had agreed to pay for that and that process was under way," Commissioner Jeff Stabins said.

The fingerprinting problem came to light in December, when Sheriff Richard Nugent complained about a backlog of more than 700 arrests that had not been entered into the statewide fingerprint database.

This was the largest backlog in the state and included three arrests for attempted murder, four for lewd or lascivious battery, three more for sexual battery and a handful for sexual molestation, child pornography and aggravated stalking.

Last week, Nugent sent a memo to County Administrator Gary Kuhl reminding him of the commission's decision.

"Currently, no further direction on how the services will be funded has been provided to this office," Nugent wrote. "In consequence, the process for the hiring of additional deputies has not been initiated and funding has not been added to either the current year or next year's proposed budget."

Kuhl said things were being held up because the Sheriff's Office and the county need to draft an agreement.

But Nugent put it back on the county: "They're waiting on us for nothing."

Kuhl said that what's really needed is for CCA, Hernando County and the Sheriff's Office to "sit down and determine how that needs to be done."

"I don't know what they're going to be negotiating," said Chief Deputy Michael Hensley. "We gave them a price that we would need. We're not negotiating this. If they no longer want to do this, let us know."

At the meeting where the fingerprint changes were voted on, the commission also voted to negotiate an increase in the fines that could be levied against the jail and to create a county jail monitor to be paid for by deductions from CCA's contract.

The drafts of these contract amendments were written and e-mailed by purchasing director Jim Gantt to a CCA account representative on Feb. 22.

"Please advise if these are acceptable or if they need to be modified, particularly the 'Booking' section," Gantt wrote in his e-mail.

Two months later, Gantt presented two of the amendments to the County Commission at its April 18 meeting, but the draft of the fingerprinting amendment - which transferred responsibility to the Sheriff's Office and charges CCA the $305,000 cost - was never presented.

Last week, Gantt said "there is no agreement done or proposed or put in writing.

"We don't have anything from anybody yet on any agreement about putting someone down there," he said. "For some reason it doesn't seem to be a high priority anymore."

In the six months since the backlog was discovered, jail staff members have kept the problem under control.

Commission Chairwoman Diane Rowden said the commission might now want to reverse its decision.

"Do we want to step back a little bit and maybe not jump into this right now and see how the warden can handle this?" she said. "These are options."

She said there had been so many things going on with the jail, and with the arrival of a new county administrator, "it's something we just didn't get to. ... (and) can assure you that it was not purposeful."

For his part, Nugent said he would not argue if the county decided to backtrack on putting deputies at the jail.

If the commission decides not to send deputies to the jail, however, the responsibility for keeping the backlog down will be entirely on the commissioners' shoulders.

"We'll notify the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to no longer contact us with these issues in reference to the jail," Nugent said. "We're not going to be put into this position of being the jail's watchdog."

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or (352)-754-6114.

[Last modified June 14, 2006, 00:18:13]