There’s only one drawback to getting rid of county government in Maine. The state would be overrun with unemployed old coots.
In the past half-century, women and young people have become more prevalent in every level of politics – with the notable exception of counties. There the power structure is still beholden to the forces of cootism, defined as government by crotchety male senior citizens (and those apprenticing to become CMSCs), who dominate county commissions and the other antiquated offices of this outmoded remnant of colonial rule.
Coots remain a potent alliance because Maine has the oldest population in the nation, which is why we’re one of the few states where it’s a crime to be a young punk. Also, our courts can still sentence youthful offenders (defined as anyone under 55) to be thrashed soundly with a cane wielded by an irate oldster. In three northern Maine counties, that newfangled Internet is illegal – or it would be if they had phone lines and electricity. In two others, texting must be done in cursive.
Nowhere is the retrograde influence of retired guys more noticeable than in the administration of county jails. In 2008, somebody noticed that allowing each county to run its own jail was inefficient. Some of those facilities were suffering from overcrowding. Others had empty cells.
A plan was devised to shift control of the jails to the state, but the coot coalition, realizing this was a dangerous incursion into its sphere of influence, used its clout to dilute the bill. Regulation of the jails would be shared.
In practical terms, that meant nobody would be in charge.
Under this system, some counties have large jails that host inmates from all over the state, other counties have no jail at all, and a few counties continue doing whatever it was they did before.
Authority over this revamped network was vested in the state Board of Corrections. By “authority,” I mean hardly any. In reality, the coots were still in control.
Under this setup, the counties are supposed to send money to the state, which the board then redistributes to those jails that are housing inmates from other counties. This ought to save money, but doesn’t, because county government, in order to protect its fiefdom, refuses to cooperate. By using the ambiguity built into the organizational chart to muddle up decision making, the coots made sure any advantages the new system might have had were obliterated.
In spite of that, advocates of the plan claim it has slowed the annual increase in jail costs, but even that modest accomplishment is open to interpretation. What isn’t in doubt is that administration of the system has devolved into a power struggle between the coots and the BOC.
This is most evident in Somerset County (motto: America’s Cootiest County), where control of the jail and its funding is in legal limbo. Somerset is supposed to be one of those places that takes inmates from other jails, because it has a large, modern facility built shortly before the jail-consolidation deal went down. The county had planned to pay for its new hoosegow with money it got from housing inmates from elsewhere in the state, but under the revised setup, those payments are too small to cover the costs. So, the local coots offered to rent space for federal prisoners and have been using that cash to pay off the bonds.
The state says that’s illegal, and to bolster its argument, it cut off Somerset’s quarterly payments covering the costs of inmates sent there from other counties. Somerset responded by refusing to accept those inmates, thereby forcing counties like Franklin, which isn’t allowed to have a jail, to incarcerate its prisoners by chaining them to trees in the path of the proposed East-West Highway. As a result, Franklin’s sheriff has announced plans to reopen his jail, even though that would be a violation of the laws he’s sworn to uphold.
Expect lots of expensive litigation – all of it billed to the taxpayers.
The easiest way to clean up this mess would be to abolish county government and transfer its duties to state agencies. That would also move the cost of those activities from the regressive property tax to the broad-based taxes that fund the state budget.
That might be slightly cheaper. It might be somewhat more efficient. But it certainly would be less coot-contaminated.
One more correction to my column two weeks ago about politicians who’ve lost races for all three major offices in Maine. Political junky Kevin Lamoreau noted the omission of Republican David Emery from my list. Emery served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1974 to 1982, but then went on an impressive losing streak, dropping a race for U.S. Senate in ’84, an attempted return to the House in 1990 and an ill-considered try for governor in 2006. He joins Plato Truman and Libby Mitchell in the pantheon of triple-crown losers.
This is about coots, not cooties, so don’t be nitpicking in your comments emailed to me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
