Pay Living Wage for Jail Inmates

It’s a proposal that will be considered tonight at Personnel and Finance Committee at 5:15 in Room 354 of the City County Building. Currently, for a 8.5 shift, they are paid . . . $3.50 PER DAY, not per hour. Seriously.

This is the language:

ARTICLE 1. Unless otherwise expressly stated herein, all references to section and chapter numbers are to those of the Dane County Code of Ordinances.910
ARTICLE 2. Section 25.015 (1)(g) is created to read as follows:
25.015 LIVING WAGE REQUIREMENT. (1) As used in this section,
(g) Inmate worker means any person in the custody of Dane County who provides services to Dane County similar to a job, including but not limited to laundry and food service.
ARTICLE 3. Section 25.015 (2) is amended to read as follows:
(2) This section applies to services provided pursuant to a contract, grant or otherwise by:
(a) All employees of an employer who has entered into a service contract of $5,000 or more, provided that this section applies only to those employees who are directly involved in providing the contracted services;
(b) All employees of employers who are beneficiaries of economic development assistance from the county worth $5,000 or more; and
(c) The county’s own employees;.
(d) Tipped employees, employees paid on commission, and others whose compensation consists of more than hourly wages shall be paid an hourly wage which, when coupled with the other compensation, will at least equal the living wage;
(e) Inmate workers as defined in this Section.

This is the discussion from the last meeting they held on this, the night they passed the better version of the jail resolution. Which was slated to go to the county board last week, but has been stopped because the better version passed!

Anyways, here’s the audio (only 12 minutes) and the meeting transcript:

Presentation
Supervisor John Hendrick – It think this is a very important amendment, he thinks it is significant to the community and he is happy to hear if there are any speakers here to speak on it. His brief take on it, as mentioned in the previous discussion, it is a special responsibility we have as we run the jail and its a special embarrassment to us that about half the people in jail are people of color and therefore it is a further embarrassment that we are using unpaid labor in the jail, technically you could argue that it is voluntary, but they are in county custody at the time you ask them to volunteer. It is little or no pay and little or no consent. The idea of paying those workers a living wage is a simple way to solve that, we already have a living wage amendment and as you know it is $11.45 per hour right now this would apply to 25 shifts per day, 25 workers per day you do 8.5 hour shifts and are paid $3.50 per day. He has to be clear about that because when they were doing the fiscal note he didn’t know what they were being paid, are they paid $3.50 per hour and they said, no, $3.50 per day, so very little, that is 25 shifts, it might be limited now, as you recall, we passed in the budget setting up a laundry facility and in-sourcing the laundry into the jail, so that is going to be a larger number of unpaid inmate workers and every year there are frequently discussions of in sourcing the food service jobs and those would be even more inmate workers. Right now with the current number of workers this is an over $800,000 fiscal note. Really when they redo that and include FICA is will be $900,000. Which is on the one hand a lot of money, but on the other hand it points out how important it is, this is a very serious issue in the jail. He promised Supervisor Krause he would outline the ways of fitting this in the budget, and in deference to you who have been here for many hours he will just outline it and see if you have any questions. The different options are a delayed effective date, they could move the effective date back to July 1st and that would cut the number in half. You could phase in the dollar amount, that would reduce it substantially, at least by a third, you could take into account off-setting revenues because when people in the jail are getting paid, they can pay jail fees or the fines that they cannot right now afford, so we would actually get income back, you could take that into account. And finally, assuming this doesn’t pass this month or next month, but in May, you could take it out of the 2014 surplus. There are ways to make this budget neutral, and its a very important issues, and again, thank you for putting it on the end of your very long agenda, he’d be happy to work on it tonight or come back to the next meeting to work on it. If you just want to pass it on to Personnel and Finance with no recommendation, they could work out the financial part there.

Questions
Supervisor Mike Willett says this is a budget amendment no matter how you do it it says it is a majority vote item, why is this listed as a majority and not 2/3.

Hendrick says in this case it is correct, this is a policy change which will have a fiscal impact, but it is not a budget amendment. He did double check with the Controller. Willet says that he double checked and a budget amendment is needed when the budget is either increased or decreased. So we are doing line items increases and decreases and he wants it straightened out, they see it time and time again and to him it has to be a 2/3 votes. Hendrick says he can only ask him to trust him, and they can look it up, but an ordinance amendment that creates an impact is not a budget amendment in the same way that a resolution that says we are going to spend x number of dollars. If there is a policy that causes they county to spend money, that is not a budget amendment, but he doesn’t think we are very far apart, he thinks this requires a budget amendment, he thinks there needs to be one once the county board decides what the ordinance will say, then he will do a budget amendment depending upon what the county board decides. With the fiscal note, they might reduce it to zero and then they won’t need a budget amendment. Willett says he wants to see the explanation but they agree they don’t need to do it tonight. They will do it by email, Willett says he keeps getting different answers, Hendrick says he should look at the county board rules where it says if you change a fee during the term that is requires a special 2/3 vote, so that is an example of where before they made that rule, you didn’t need a 2/3 vote because it was not a budget amendment.

Andy Schauer says he understands it but he cares less about that then whether or not this is good policy, if we haven’t looked at it far enough to pay for it he is concerned about creating a $862,000 hole in next years budget which is what it would do if they didn’t do anything else. He thinks it needs more study and this is the committee to do it he doesn’t want to pass it on to Personnel and Finance without us answering some questions, what do other counties do? Hendrick says that we would probably be the only county that would have this policy. (Laughter) Schauer says we do a lot of things here in Dane County that . . . Hendrick says off the top of his head we would be the only jail or prison nationwide that would have this policy . . . Schauer says that because he represents the Town of Burke and not just Madison, he says that is concerning to him as a policy directive. (rambling) One of his best friends is literally in this jail right now and he appreciates this, he wants them treated well and he wants them to be able to work off their sentences. When they engage in these types of worker programs they get good time, right. Hendrick says they get a sentence reduction. Schauer says, to they are not getting just the thirty cents per hour, they are actually getting time off their sentences as well. Hendrick says this wouldn’t change that, they would get sentence reduction and a living wage. Schauer says he is torn from those points and for those reasons he would recommend tabling and when we look at it next, we know a way to get $860,000 down to zero he would like to look at it again but for now it is too big of a budget hole. They asks if this is to a a specific meeting.

Willett moves to postpone until the next meeting. They don’t recognize the motion, ask if Schauer wants to make it, he seems to. Willett seconds.

Paul Rusk says he’ll vote to postpone it but quite frankly spending $800,000 to pay the living wage in the Dane County Jail when we have a crisis in the community on mental health, when we don’t even do a good job with homelessness, when we have issue after issue, if we are not . . . Willett says if we’re tabling it give it up . . . Rusk says it leads to all these problems it seems ridiculous, $800,000 would get us (me and Carousel) 8 health care workers for my campus off jail facility, but anyway . . . Willett asks if they voted on it?

They vote to postpone to the next meeting.

Hendrick asks if the had any registrants from the public. The registration slips are all messed up (after several hours of other topics). Most people left. They ask if anyone left wants to speak, one person says yes but they will come back next time.

My comments
Q: $3.50 PER DAY? How can they get away with that?

A: The US Constitution – 13th amendment.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

And, I gotta say, Paul Rusks “concern” drives me nuts. First cuz he so blatantly said he can’t give you this money cuz he wants it for his thing. Second, for when he says there are all these other important issue – but when those issues come up – the same excuse is used – there are other important issues that they really care about. So it makes them sound supportive of all kinds of issues that when it comes down to it, they don’t support anything except their pet project. Its disingenuous.