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LISBON -- A new company is being hired to operate the Columbiana County Jail.
County Commissioner Mike Halleck reported at Wednesday's meeting he expects to sign a contract in the next several days with the Correctional Solutions Group LLC of Tyler, Texas.
The contract with the current operator, the GEO Group, expires at the end of the year, but it can be terminated early with advance notice, which is what commissioners have chosen to do. Halleck said switching to CSG will not only save them $300,000 a year, but he believes it is a better fit for the county given the company's experience operating smaller county jails
The county had been paying GEO and past operators a per diem based on the average number of inmates incarcerated the jail on a monthly basis, buy Halleck wanted to switch to a single contract amount. GEO was paid $3.8 million in 2018 based on the monthly per diem and had offered to continue as operator for $3.92 million per year.
The 30-month contract with CSG begins July 1, but contains two options to extend the agreement for an additional two years each time. The company would be paid a set amount of $3.59 million the first year and a receive 3 percent increase July 1, 2020. Any proposed increases after that must be approved by commissioners.
CSG will continue the practice of paying for all utilities, which total about $500,000 a year.
GEO had been operating the jail for the past two years after acquiring the company that had been running the facility. The decision to switch to CSG comes about a year after a series of well-publicized incidents at the jail, but Halleck said that did not play a role in their decision,
"Obviously, those things were straightened out. Frankly, it was about two things. First is the money, but equally important are structural issues. GEO is a very good company" but it is used to operating much larger jails and prisons, he said.
"We were a small fish in a big pond with them, but now will be a bigger fish in a smaller pond," Halleck said of CSG, which operates a number of facilities ranging from 30 beds up to 300. The county jail is licensed to house up to 192 inmates.
CSG operates 17 local and county jails and detention centers, 11 halfway houses for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, four facilities for the California Department of Corrections, and five state and county pre-release centers.
To address the problems at the jail, Halleck came up with an eight-step plan that included hosting weekly meetings between Warden Mike Curley and county Sheriff Ray Stone, but he does not know if those meetings will continue, at least on a regular basis. "My intent with those meetings was not for my benefit. It was for Curley and the sheriff to open up a better line of communication, and I think we have done that," he said.
Halleck is pleased Curley will stay on as warden. Hired by GEO in November 2017, Curley was the sixth warden in two years at that point, and local officials believe turnover in the position contributed to the problems. Halleck said Curley will have the authority with CSG to address problems more quickly.
"Frankly, he has really turned things around," he said of Curley, a retired deputy warden in the Michigan prison system.
Corrections officers will undergo 100 additional hours of training immediately and 40 more hours per year after that. Halleck said corrections officers will be armed with taser guns for the first time.
Halleck was authorized two months ago by his fellow commissioners to begin exploring their options in regard to the jail contract, and that included hiring consultant Peter Argeropulos for $5,000 to assist him. Argeropulos worked at one time for CiviGenics Inc., the first private company hired by commissioners to begin operating the jail in 1998.
tgiambroni@mojonews.com