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Politics

A high price for antimurder

By ASJYLYN LODER
Published March 19, 2007

Gov. Charlie Crist's first legislation - the antimurder bill signed March 12 - could cost Hernando County $2.3 million a year.

The state won't pay for it. Instead, the bill will fall to county taxpayers already clamoring for tax relief.

"It's a good law. There's no question it will save lives," said Hernando County Commissioner Dave Russell, a former state legislator. "Just help us out a little bit."

Other counties are likewise reeling. In Pinellas County, the measure could cost as much as $32,600 a day, said Elithia Stanfield, deputy county administrator in Pinellas County.

"It's very frustrating because there are some legislators that say local governments are spending money like drunken sailors," Stanfield said. "And then they do this."

The bill requires violent felons who violate probation to stay in jail until a judge decides if they are a danger to the community.

The bill could add another 2,500 people to the prison population in the next five years, at a cost of $270-million, according to the senate cost estimate.

But the estimate didn't include the cost to local counties of arresting and putting offenders in county jails. That cost, the senate analysis concluded, is "indeterminate but could be significant."

In Hillsborough County, cost estimates were conservative: just $100,000 a year, or $274 a day, estimated Darlene Hansford, population analyst for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

That's because the county already has a judge dedicated to probation violators, she said. That means shorter stays - about 26 days last year - and lower costs. But Hillsborough is one of only three counties with a separate court.

"There are some angry counties out there," Hansford said. "In some counties, it's really going to cost them."

Each county used different measures to count the cost: average jail stay of probation violators, cost per day to house an inmate, number of probation violators that would be held under the law.

Pasco and Citrus Counties still haven't calculated the potential cost, said officials in both counties.

The bill moved so quickly that counties didn't have time, Russell said.

The antimurder legislation was proposed twice before, when Crist was state Attorney General. But it failed both times, in part because of skeptics wary of overburdening counties.

There are some measures in place meant to lessen the cost, including the relaxation of a "zero tolerance" policy that increased jail populations, Russell explained.

But most counties don't know yet what it will cost, and that alarms him.

"We'll know next year," he said, "When we get the bill."

Times staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report. Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or 352 754-6127.

[Last modified March 18, 2007, 20:54:17]