You may not realize it, but Kennebec County provides housing and living costs for approximately 2,136 people each year (as of 2024). Many are in and out in a day or so. But it’s not the Western movie hoosegow where a drunk is sobered up or the occasional federal bad guy is warehoused.

What’s this? The Kennebec County Correctional Facility or, for short, the County Jail. The average occupancy is 140 people, and their average stay is 69 days. The jail consumes about 49% of the county’s budget. Statewide, county jails hold a daily average attendance of 1,400.

Nobody wants to think about these people and this amount of money. But there are several reasons why we will have to do it. Not only is the amount large, it is budgeted in a nontransparent way. It’s shown on your property tax bill as a small amount due the counties — usually 8% or 10% of a town’s budget. Worse still, it’s not decided until May or June of each year; many towns have already held their town meetings.

Most years, this has been a small problem — increases have been held to small amounts. In recent years, however, matters have changed. We’ve fallen behind on a number of fronts.

The jail was authorized for 80 employees, or half the county’s staff, in the 2024-25 budget. They work 8¼-hour shifts, and one 16-hour shift is typical each week. They are not merely burly guards. The jail often cannot recruit enough people. Until a substantial pay raise this year, they earned about what they could get at any fast food place.

For fiscal 2025-26, the overall budget for medical care was the county’s largest at $3.2 million, bringing the total to $13 million. Prescription drug costs are one major cause and, in turn, a major reason why the tax rate rose. The counties are squeezed between towns and cities that raise the taxes and the state.

How did we get into this mess? By not talking about it. It was resolved in the past by small groups of people in small rooms. It needed very little attention so long as the increases were modest.

They’re not modest anymore. We owe this to the opioid epidemic — both the number of inmates every year and in particular the cost of inmates’ treatment for drug and drug-related problems.

Drug treatment costs are higher than most realize. The Legislature has mandated that all counties provide drug-assisted treatment but hasn’t appropriated enough funding. The jail must maintain a medical staff on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the jail resembles a clinic — with an average stay of 69 days.

The Kennebec County facility presently holds eight people charged with murder; their average stay is 1½ years. The state prosecutes murders. But surely a method can be found that allocates some of these costs to the state. What should be done with these costs?

There is legitimate debate over the logical division point between local and state responsibilities. We understand the Department of Corrections has its own problems. But we believe the Legislature is unfairly burdening the counties — and hence the property tax base.

The time has come to form a commission on state-local relations in law enforcement. We’re living with a system inherited from late medieval England, and it’s broken. It needs to be examined, root and branch, and tough questions asked: Do we need sheriffs in our smaller counties? Who will do local patrols, and do we need them? Do we need county jails, or should we merge them into a state-run system? Who should pay the costs of drug treatment?

These issues have been debated before. But the longer we paper them over, the more costly it will become.

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