County jail work under scrutiny

Renovation cost nearly twice as much as planned and the agency managing it had little oversight

By Josh Sweigart, Staff Writer 1:48 AM Sunday, July 12, 2009

HAMILTON — The idea was simple: Use inmate labor to renovate Butler County’s mothballed jail to create prison space that could be rented to other jurisdictions at a profit.

The payoff was promising. Jail space was at a premium throughout the country, and Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones and other advocates said customers were lining up from as far away as California.

But in the process, the county cut corners, a Cox Ohio Publishing investigation has found. And county officials spent nearly twice what was originally estimated with little oversight of the private agency managing the work.

And in the end, the paid prisoners fell short. Far fewer paid prisoners showed up than were promised.

The Court Street jail went mostly unused until Jones closed the Resolutions minimum security jail in June and relocated more than 200 prisoners there, saying the move would save the county money. But Resolutions Community Solutions Inc. manages all the county jails, and helped renovate the Court Street facility with no contract.

Resolutions is one of several subsidiaries of Fort Hamilton Healthcare Corp., a nonprofit with no official ties to the Hamilton hospital.

It has secured no-bid construction management work, a lucrative land lease with the county, an annual contract worth $5.7 million last year and a number of other services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

All this for a program that started in 1989 as a minimum security jail facility to provide treatment to people arrested for drunken driving — 85 inmates per the original contract, totaling just more than $1 million a year.

But behind closed doors, county leaders are reportedly turning the screws on the company, which has enjoyed unusual access to the county’s coffers for years.

The sheriff’s office defends the use of Resolutions for the jail work, saying it was up to commissioners to ensure there were contracts and bids. Commissioners say it was the sheriff’s project with help from former county administrator Derek Conklin. Neither Conklin nor Resolutions would comment on the deal.

The county auditor has his concerns, saying any project that costs more than $25,000 must be bid out under state law.

But behind closed doors, county leaders are reportedly turning the screws on the company, which has enjoyed unusual access to the county’s coffers for years.

We know nothing goes on behind closed doors in Middletown!

 

But in the process, the county cut corners, a Cox Ohio Publishing investigation has found.