Lucas County Weighs In On CCNO

Lucas County is ask­ing the board to recon­sider how it is billed in light of recent changes between the City of Toledo and Lucas County fol­low­ing Wednesday’s meet­ing of the Cor­rec­tions Com­mis­sion of North­west Ohio.

Com­mis­sioner Pete Gerken ques­tioned the Octo­ber billing. He said the bill reflects the shift from Toledo to Lucas County and ques­tions the author­ity of such changes being made by the exec­u­tive direc­tor. He argued that the billing change was not approved by the board and noted the oper­at­ing agree­ment was silent on billing.

CCNO Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Jim Den­nis said he received a let­ter from the City of Toledo advis­ing they were charg­ing offend­ers under state law. Mr. Den­nis said he dis­cussed the mat­ter with the CCNO finan­cial overview com­mit­tee and the board but there was no res­o­lu­tion made. He said state laws were reviewed, a legal opin­ion sought and changes were made to the billing sys­tem.

But Com­mis­sioner Gerken said the change was made with­out the con­sent of Lucas County.

CCNO Board Chair­man Dave Westrick said the mat­ter will be dis­cussed by the CCNO finan­cial overview com­mit­tee. A res­o­lu­tion was passed to have the CCNO finan­cial overview com­mit­tee review CCNO billing to mem­bers. Sher­iff Westrick said new ter­ri­tory is being entered in the 25 years CCNO has been in oper­a­tion. He said pay­ment of the bill could wait until the mat­ter is reviewed and acted on at the next board meet­ing.

In other busi­ness, Direc­tor Den­nis said Wednesday’s pop­u­la­tion stood at 555 or 87 per­cent. The pop­u­la­tion aver­aged 577 or 90 per­cent in Octo­ber and 553 or 87 per­cent in Novem­ber.

Mem­bers awarded a con­tract to cur­rent sup­plier Secu­rus to pro­vide inmate tele­phones, video vis­i­ta­tion and auto­mated infor­ma­tion ser­vices. The bid had orig­i­nally been awarded to GTL but chal­lenged by other bid­ders who wanted to sub­mit their best and final offer.