Mercer County commissioners struggle with rising regional jail costs

PRINCETON, W.Va. (WVVA) - Mercer County’s regional jail bill has been rising over the past few years.

What was once $48 per inmate per day is now $67, and that amount is expected to rise again with the arrival of the new fiscal year in July.

County commissioners are fighting to keep up with the ever-rising costs.

“It’s not saying that we don’t wanna pay our bill to the regional jail authority, but you know, when you’re looking at $241,000, we’re already at this point over a hundred thousand dollars right now over budget, and we still have five months to go,” said Greg Puckett, Mercer County commissioner.

The Mercer County Commissioner’s Office is struggling for solutions on how to tackle the increasing regional jail bill, with the current monthly costs looking to go over the budget of $1.7 million allocated for the year.

“So basically what we decided to do was we put a moratorium on that. We would pay a hundred thousand dollars a month to get us back into some sort of a regional a reasonable amount of money. And hopefully, uh, that over the course of time, you know, we can still get the collections in to be able to pay the bill. But right now it’s just unmanageable,” Puckett said.

Puckett said this short-term solution has no long-term gain, and even with increasing home confinement, he does not find this to be feasible until the state takes the cost of the regional bill off of the county.

“We pay all of the bill, the municipalities put people in jail. They don’t pay it. State police puts people in there, they don’t pay it. We pay it. The taxpayer pays it, which is not a fair assessment to be honest. But the problem is without of a diversification of revenue without something additional, that allows us to take the burden off of the taxpayer, we can’t keep doing this line of business,” Puckett said.

Puckett said he hopes to see a solution arise that will keep the taxpayers’ money locally.