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Plan called a "policical decision"

By DIANA BOWLEY
Bangor Daily News

PISXATAQUIS COUNTY, Maine — Criticism flowed freely Tuesday as Piscataquis County commissioners diced a plan for the state takeover of county jails.
As part of the plan, the state proposes to close the Piscataquis, Waldo, Franklin and Oxford county jails.
"This administration has declared war on rural Maine," Commissioner Tom Lizotte said Tuesday, noting that all four counties were predominantly Republican. "It's like they made a political decision."
In an effort to thwart the movement, the commissioners agreed Tuesday to present a united front with the three other counties and to donate $5,000 from the county coffers toward the cost of a consultant for a feasibility analysis, if needed.
The fact that no collaboration was solicited from county and local officials before the state plan was announced is frustrating enough, county commissioners said. The lack of data, however, to back the state's claim that the move will bring property tax relief and the unanswered questions about the proposal are just unbelievable, they said.
"We're all in favor of lowering property taxes in this state but the level of financial analysis behind this proposal is just not there," Lizotte said. "If any undergraduate business student in college sent in a proposal with that level of analysis, they would get a flunking grade."
Why, if the state's prisons have been overcrowded in recent months as the Department of Corrections announced, would they move to close four jails, Piscataquis County Sheriff John Goggin asked.
The unanswered questions are many, according to County Manager Mike Henderson. He said state officials haven't considered the cost of heat and maintenance of the local facility and the loss of revenue from the jails that board federal prisoners in their calculations.
Nor, Henderson said, has the state identified whose responsibility it would be to transport the prisoners to Bangor - town, county or state; how it would affect the families and the support system of the prisoners if they are boarded in far away locations; and whether the state would take ownership of the closed jails.
In a county reeling from the recent closing of Moosehead Manufacturing Co., the loss of more jobs from the jail closing would be devastating, according to Lizotte.
"Losing the jail here could be a disaster for the county," Lizotte said. A debt payment of $25,000 next month will pay off the jail built in 1987.
If the county has no jail, then there likely will be no effort to build a new courthouse, according to Goggin, suggesting that the state may have another agenda for the jail closing.
The closing would have a ripple effect in the local economy since many of the commodities for the jail are purchased locally, from medicine to groceries.
"You're taking that money right out of this economy," Goggin said.
Although he is opposed to the closing, Goggin hinted that the county could convert the jail into a private boarding facility for federal prisoners, if the county gets to keep the jail. However, there has been no answer as to who would own the jail if it were closed.
"This is not a turf issue for me; if they could come up and show that it is a real tax savings proposal for the citizens of Piscataquis County, I'd go along with this proposal," Goggin said. They haven't done that, he said.

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