Fayette County Commissioner

Herb Frady wants his fellow commissioners to reconsider their decision

last week to end a seven-year-old agreement to house municipal prisoners

in the County Jail at no charge.

"This thing was done without

thinking," Frady told The Citizen Monday.

Under the commission's 4-1

vote Thursday, Fayette and its cities have until the end of this year

to negotiate a new agreement. The county is formally notifying the cities

that the old one, written in 1993, will be terminated Dec. 31.

The move is likely to further

widen the breach that has been growing for two years between county elected

officials and those in Fayetteville, Peachtree City and Tyrone over use

of the jail, how to pay for the jail, and how taxes and government services

are divided among county and city residents.

"The municipal courts

take in fines and fees for the cities' coffers, and I don't feel it's

right for them when the people don't pay their fines to have the county

house those prisoners at no charge," said Commissioner Harold Bost

last week after proposing to end the agreement.

Bost stressed that cities would

be charged only for prisoners sentenced to jail time by municipal courts.

Commissioners have complained that municipal courts sometimes jail minor

offenders for weeks or months, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars

in order to collect relatively small fines.

But in a heated exchange with

Bost and other commissioners, Frady pointed out that the county receives

a 10 percent surcharge on the cities' fines, and argued that the surcharge

more than makes up for the cost of housing misdemeanor offenders.

"I think it's fair and

equal to continue this agreement at this time," he said. "If

this money should run out, then we should charge the cities."

He said the surcharge has provided

$136,000 so far this fiscal year, which ends in June, though about $11,000

of that is repayment from prior years. Even so, collections are on track

to meet the budgeted amount of $211,000 for the year, he said.

And $1.12 million from the

surcharge is already waiting in a jail fund, he added.

This week, he said, he is asking

commissioners to consider the fact that, although ending the 1993 agreement

will allow the county to charge per diem fees to house city prisoners,

the cities also will be under no obligation to renew the surcharge.

"They're going to quit

giving it to us, there's no question about that," he said.

The surcharge has been placed

in a fund for construction of the new jail, Bost argued last week. In

the meantime, the county is having to pay $45 a day to house 50 prisoners

in a Union City facility, and will need to recoup some of that cost in

the two years it will take to build the new jail.

Frady shot back that, although

the surcharge has gone into the construction fund, there's nothing in

the agreement that stipulates that it should. In the final analysis, the

surcharge effectively reimburses the county for the cost of city prisoners,

he said. "We're getting the 10 percent and I think it's worked out

very well this way. I think this [ending the agreement] is personally

uncalled for," he said.

"It's a hostile thing

to do," he told The Citizen this week.

Commissioners Linda Wells and

Greg Dunn argued that the surcharge money will be absorbed just in the

additional cost of running the new jail. More personnel will be needed

for the larger facility, they said.

But Frady said this week he

has been told that if they choose, there is a way that city courts can

send their minor offenders through State Court, avoiding both any per

diem fees and the surcharge.

"This is not going to

accomplish anything," he said. "We really need to reconsider

it."