Five Fulton County commissioners on Wednesday rejected Commissioner Dana Barrett’s proposal to remove a reporting requirement attached to millions of dollars earmarked to pay for jailer overtime at the chronically troubled Fulton County Jail.
Several commissioners agreed that the jail is in crisis, and that the money is needed for a facility that has, at times, been overcrowded, lacked adequate medical and psychiatric care for inmates and was the subject of a Department of Justice investigation last year that found conditions inside “abhorrent” and “unconstitutional.”
But that did not solve the political dispute over whether the sheriff’s office should have to provide quarterly staffing data upon which the extra funding is contingent.
“All I want to do is get the red tape out of the way,” Barrett said before the vote. “Whether we think the sheriff is ridiculous for not providing it or we think that he’s well-founded in not providing it, it doesn’t matter. Let’s get the money where it belongs.
“This is crazy.”
Commissioner Bridget Thorne — who along with Bob Ellis, Mo Ivory, Khadijah Abdur-Rahman and Robb Pitts voted against the measure — said Sheriff Patrick Labat is to blame for blocking access to the funds. Barrett and Marvin S. Arrington Jr. voted in favor.
“We’re not the barrier,” Thorne said. “Let’s make that clear. The sheriff is being the barrier right now. It’s not us. He’s not complying.”
Sheriff’s office spokesperson Natalie Ammons told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the staffing roster has not been provided because “there are concerns regarding Sheriff Labat attesting to reports that are created and controlled by the county human resources system, a system over which the Sheriff has no control.”
But, Ammons acknowledged, the sheriff’s office needs the money to pay overtime going forward and to help with hiring and retention of jailers.
“The paycheck employees will receive this week with overtime exhausts our fund and puts us in the negative,” Ammons said in an email.
Commissioners Ivory and Arrington said the division between the Board of Commissioners and the sheriff has the potential to harm jail employees during what Ivory called “this crisis humanitarian situation that we find ourselves in.”
“I don’t think the staff should be caught in the middle or become subject to the constitutional crisis between the commission and the sheriff,” Arrington said. “The staff should be able to get their money for overtime.”
In May, the Board of Commissioners approved legislation brought by Ellis to provide an extra $1.8 million per quarter for the rest of this calendar year to the sheriff’s office. The money would pay overtime for employees who perform detention duties.
Ellis’ legislation also offered $1 million as a one-time infusion this year for activities that foster hiring and retention of full-time detention staff.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
But the offer came with a catch: to get the money, the sheriff’s office would have to provide a complete roster of its employees, including job titles and whether each employee works full-time in detention facilities.
The legislation Barrett proposed Wednesday said the reporting requirement created “an unintended roadblock that has led to a delay of over two months in the delivery of urgently needed funding.”
Her resolution noted that the scathing report released last year by the DOJ concluded that inadequate staffing at the Fulton County Jail and other factors may expose inmates to a “substantial risk of serious harm.”
The DOJ and Fulton County have reached a legally binding consent decree for needed improvements following the federal investigation.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Ellis, a frequent critic of Labat’s spending and management, has said his legislation was designed, in part, to nudge the sheriff toward increasing the percentage of employees who work in detention full-time.
Ellis’ resolution says the Board of Commissioners is concerned that the staffing resources of the sheriff’s office “are not being appropriately focused and concentrated in the provision of detention services, thereby unnecessarily creating safety and security issues.”
When Ellis’ resolution was approved in May, Labat’s office issued a statement decrying the commissioner’s “hyperbole,” calling it unproductive and divisive.
“While we acknowledge what appears to be a step in the right direction, the reality is that the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has faced decades of inadequate funding,” the statement reads in part.
Last month, Labat escalated his long-running battle with county leaders over how his office spends money, warning in a lawsuit against the county that he can’t get critical resources because of unnecessary bureaucracy.
Barrett argued Wednesday that requiring Labat to provide the staffing updates is unnecessary because Fulton County’s Department of Human Resources can do so.
However, County Manager Dick Anderson said the county still needs the sheriff’s cooperation to fulfill the requirement for quarterly staffing reports.
“We can determine where people are assigned today,” Anderson said. “Where they reported to and worked in the course of a quarter is really the insight that he would provide.”
Thorne questioned why Labat, or one of his executive staff, did not attend Wednesday’s meeting to explain why his office has not provided the employee roster.
“Why is Commissioner Barrett presenting it and not the sheriff’s office?” Thorne asked, adding: “If his staff is stuck in a crisis, it seems like he’d be down here begging to help his staff.”
“For me it’s very, very hard to release this money,” Thorne said. “We’ve given him money for overtime in the past. He’s proven not to spend money appropriately.”
Ammons, Labat’s spokesperson, said in May the department had 563 sworn staff, 372 of whom were assigned full time to jail operations. She added that “all sworn employees work jail operations.”
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