BILLINGS - The Yellowstone County Detention facility houses about 40 to 50 federal inmates per day on average, and the U.S. Marshal Service pays less than what it costs.
The county commissioners approved an agreement that decreases some of that deficit.
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“The Marshals Service has prisoners requiring beds,” Commissioner Mark Morse, R-Yellowstone County, said at a meeting on Tuesday. “Yellowstone County can supply those beds. Taxpayers should not subsidize those beds.”
Commissioners voted, 2-1, to rescind an agreement for $117 a day they approved in January and put into place a new rate of $115.
That rate was scheduled to go into effect on April 1, commissioners changed the rate on Tuesday, and it will go into effect on May 1.
“We had to rescind the resolution on the federal government rate so we could implement the new contract.” said Commissioner Mike Waters, R-Yellowstone County.
Waters and Commissioner John Ostund, R-Yellowstone County, voted for the $115 rate, which is $2 less than the cost to house an inmate in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility.
“The windfall to the county would be over half a million dollars to our budget,” Waters said. “If you look at the $2 difference in that deficit, from what we're asking to what they offered for $2 a day would end up about around $70,000 a year.”
Waters says the $115 is much better than the $85 negotiated in 2016.
And while commissioners would have preferred to have the $117 per day, two of them approved the $115 because the U.S. Marshals Service agreed to that increase just last week.
“I was wanting to try to keep that relationship going and also keep a good atmosphere and environment for further negotiations in the future,” Waters said.
Waters says agreeing to the $115 brings in about $500,000 more annually to Yellowstone County.
However, Morse, who voted against the $115 rate, says the county has been subsidizing the Marshals Service at $32 a day per inmate.
“Approximately 9 years, we've received the $85 rate, and it's cost us more than that,” Morse said.
Morse says the county's costs are estimated for 2024, and the actual cost for 2025 may be $120 per inmate, but he says it will stay at the $115 rate for 3 years.
“Inflation goes wild and inflation goes up 10 or 15 or 20 percent, the only figure we're going to get is $115 a day per inmate."
