“A mess”; “ugly” “lead balloon”; “unprecedented”; “big trouble.” Those words, and many more, were used today (Oct. 1) by the Podcast 83 team as they discussed the effects on Michigan counties in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s flurry of line-item vetoes to the 2020 state budget.

Executive Director Stephan Currie, Deena Bosworth and Meghann Keit went over the $60 million in county funding effects that were included in Whitmer’s decision this week.

In brighter county news, Bosworth details upcoming testimony and prospects for new legislation that would convert Michigan’s 2-year county commissioner terms to 4 years.

All this and more on the newest episode of Podcast 83.

In an unprecedented move, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday issued 147 line-item vetoes in the FY20 budget, affecting more than $947 million in state spending. Although the 2.3 percent increase (about $5 million) for county revenue sharing evaded the vetoes, other line items for specific programs and services provided by counties were hit, stripping away about $60 million in funding for county programs.

“While we see that counties were collateral damage in a fight between the governor and the Legislature, there’s no way to sugarcoat what $60 million in cuts mean to our members,” said Stephan Currie, MAC executive director. “These are significant, troubling reductions. We plan to make a vigorous case to both sides that these results need to be reversed as quickly as possible with a supplemental appropriations bill.”

Among the reductions to county services affected by Whitmer’s moves are:

• $27 million taken from the PILT (payments in lieu of taxes) program that counties rely on to be compensated for public lands that do not pay taxes (49.5 percent of all land in Crawford County, for example, is owned by the state)
• $14.9 million taken from the state’s program to reimburse county jails for housing state inmates
• $13 million taken from funds to aid sheriffs in providing road patrols around their counties
• $4 million taken from funding to counties under the Child Care Fund, which covers Michigan’s foster care system
• $4 million taken from grants meant for county services to veterans
• $2.7 million taken from reimbursements for court-appointed guardians
• $1 million taken from grants meant for county fairs and other exhibitions

Learn more about the situation by listening to a new episode of MAC’s Podcast 83.

Despite falling arrests, particularly among young people, tens of thousands of people in Michigan are still arrested for low-level charges like failure to appear in court, marijuana possession and shoplifting, the Michigan Jail and Pretrial Detention Task Force was told by researchers during the task force’s meeting in Grand Rapids on Sept. 20.

A team from PEW Trusts gave the task force a wide-ranging presentation on the trends and challenges in dealing with jail populations. The task force, a joint effort of the state and counties, was created by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer this spring.

Other points made by Pew during its report:

• People are also going to jail in very large numbers for administrative rule-breaking like driving without a valid license and violating probation conditions. 
• Officers issue fewer citations in lieu of arrest than they have in past years.  Overall, arrests far outnumber citations, even for low-level crimes.
• Short jail stays disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives, but Michigan’s high jail populations are driven by relatively few people who stay in jail longer than a month. 

Panel members, including Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen and Alpena County Commissioner Bill Peterson, also received a briefing from Wayne State University on mental illness and substance abuse in Michigan jails.

The team, led by Sheryl Kubiak of the Wayne State Center for Behavioral Health and Justice, said that 23 percent of jail inmates exhibited serious mental illness (SMI), but with rates varying notably by the size of the county. In rural counties, for example, 34 percent were identified with SMI.

Also, inmates with SMI had average jail stays twice as long as those without SMI, when adjusting for criminal offense. Longer stays, of course, mean more strains on limited county budgets which must support jail operations.

“Identifying who is going to jail, for how long and why, is critical for the Task Force so they can fully understand the scope of our jail population and create recommendations that may result in savings for county budgets, while ensuring the public safety of our communities,” said Stephan Currie, MAC’s executive director.

The task force meets next on Oct. 18 in Detroit. Livestreaming will be available. Anyone is encouraged to connect with the Task Force in various ways:

• Online, where you can sign up for regular newsletters 
• Email at JailsTaskForce@courts.mi.gov
• Or connect with Commissioner Talen, one of MAC’s two representatives on the Task Force, at Jim.Talen@kentcountymi.gov to be added to the update and information list

Oakland County Commissioner Shelley Goodman Taub, who served as president of the MAC Board in 2016-17, was appointed to the Board of the National Association of Counties (NACo) during NACo’s recent Annual Conference.

At the same event, Taub also was re-appointed as chair of NACo’s Arts and Culture Commission and vice chair of its Human Services and Education Steering Committee.

“I am honored to have been reappointed to these leadership roles,” Taub stated in an Oakland County release. “I look forward to building on the work that we’ve already accomplished and continuing to address important issues that impact all of us.”

Taub was first elected to the MAC Board in 2012. As president in 2016-17, she spearheaded the creation of MAC’s Commissioners Forum, an online message board where Michigan commissioners can post questions and share best practices.