Don't expect any statewide legislation addressing how Alabama's sheriffs manage excess inmate jail-feeding money during the waning days of this year's legislative session.
"It is obvious that the challenges facing Alabama's penal system on both the state and local levels require us to look into issues like inmate food allowance," said Alabama House Speaker Mac McCutcheon in an email.
"With so few days remaining in the session, however, it's unlikely we could adequately study possible solutions, draft legislation, and pass a bill before final adjournment, especially given that this issue also involves budgetary decisions made by local commissions and law enforcement."
Indeed, a statewide resolution would be complicated.
Plus, associations representing county commissioners and sheriffs are likely to oppose any one-size-fits-all proposal, arguing that each county jail in Alabama is different.
For instance, some jails take in federal inmates, and receive more compensation to do so. Others contract a third-party company to manage the feeding of inmates.
"I sense there have been pockets around the state where the citizens want the process changed," said state Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, who sponsored local legislation to make changes in Morgan County, where the past two sheriffs have faced embarrassing situations involving the excess food money.
"The state, as a whole, it's very difficult to pass legislation when you have the sheriffs around the state who would call legislators and say, 'We don't like that statewide food bill, please make sure it doesn't pass,'" said Orr.
He added, "Plus, there is a fear on the part of county commissions around the state that they don't want to be saddled with having to feed prisoners."
Local fixes
Instead, lawmakers plan to adopt a series of piecemeal local solutions in the aftermath of an AL.com story last week detailing how Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin made more than $250,000 during each of the past three years by running the jail food program.
The local legislations, if approved, would apply only to Etowah, Morgan and Cullman counties. They would only be adopted if constitutional amendments, in each of those counties, are approved by voters in November.
The moves are aimed at whittling away at a 1939 state law, which gives sheriffs the legal authority to pocket the excess jail-feeding money.
The Association of County Commissions of Alabama, which represents elected commissioners statewide, said their members have expressed weariness about taking over the liability of feeding inmates. Alabama law has also long provided county sheriffs with the authority to administer his or her own jail.
"Any move to shift to the county commission and make it responsible for that is going to generate a conflict," said Sonny Brasfield, executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.
Lawmakers, though, note a pattern of questionable behavior among sheriffs.
- In 2006, former Mobile County Sheriff Jack Tillman was convicted on charges that he took food money and placed it into a personal retirement account.
- In 2009, former Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett was given the moniker "Sheriff Corndog" after he was held in contempt of court and jailed for one night by a federal judge after it was learned that he pocketed more than $200,000 from the food money. Inmates, the judge learned, had been eating corn dogs twice a day for weeks.
- Last year, Morgan County Sheriff Ana Franklin was found in contempt of court for loaning $150,000 of the jail's inmate feeding funds to invest in a crooked used car dealership.
The most recent incident, publicized by AL.com last week, showed that Entrekin in Etowah County earns around $93,178 annually, but generates nearly three times that much by pocketing excess tax money from feeding inmates.
The story also revealed how Entrekin recently spent $740,000 to purchase a four-bedroom beach house in Baldwin County. Entrekin is planning to hold a news conference on Friday.
"It gives the state a black eye," said Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran about the attention over the law. He said he is hopeful statewide legislation can be approved someday to address the situation.
Sheriff pay
Cochran said at least two major things need to be negotiated before statewide legislation can advance: Sheriffs need to be removed from the liabilities of feeding their inmates, and annual salaries for sheriffs in smaller counties need to be increased.
"Some sheriffs are grossly underpaid and their pay has not been adjusted (for years)," he said. "(Lawmakers) need to look at that as well. It would be a big plus for the state and I'm really surprised the members of the Legislature haven't stepped up on this."
Mobile County is one of 18 that have approved a new system to recapture the excess inmate food funds. Most of the state's largest counties also followed suit, such as Jefferson, Madison, and Montgomery counties.
Of Alabama's 67 counties, 49 were listed in a Jan. 5 lawsuit, filed in Hale County by the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. The lawsuit names the sheriffs in each county, and is aimed at receiving financial accounting and public disclosures on how the sheriffs across the state use the money.
The largest Alabama county listed is Baldwin County. Sheriff Huey "Hoss" Mack said that, over the years, Baldwin County Commissioners "never voiced an interest" in taking over the feeding of the inmates.
"I do believe the responsibility of feeding inmates should remain with the sheriff since the sheriff is responsible for the overall security, safety, health and wellbeing of inmates," Mack said.
Mack said he's never taken income from the county's food bill account, and he believes no sheriff ought to personally profit from tax money derived from feeding inmates. He said that excess money on the food bill is "rolled into the next year." Meals at the Baldwin County jail are prepared by Aramark Industries.
"It's never been a worry in Baldwin County and certainly not with Sheriff Mack," said Chris Elliott, chairman of the Baldwin County Commission, and a candidate for an Alabama Senate seat this year.
"It is time for a uniform approach," said Elliott. "I think the sheriffs would appreciate that."
Statewide fix?
State Rep. Mack Butler and Sen. Phil Williams, both Republicans from Rainbow City in Etowah County, say they prefer a statewide bill over the current piecemeal approach.
Butler introduced legislation this week addressing Etowah County as a response to the AL.com story, which has generated national attention.
Williams, in the Senate, would be a sponsor of Butler's bill. But he said this week that he's not sure it's the right path.
"It creates a patch work quilt approach in dealing with a state issue," said Williams.
Butler said getting a piece of legislation through before lawmakers adjourn next week is important.
"We have so many good things going on in Alabama, this is not the attention we want," he said. "Hopefully, this will fix it and put it to rest."
'Abomination, embarrassment'
For some longtime observers of Alabama state politics, the perception of sheriffs profiting off inmates and their food accounts illustrates a deeper problem with the state's constitution and the structure of county government.
Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University, said it's past time state lawmakers undertake a comprehensive analysis of county governments.
"American voters know the least about county-level government than any other level of government," said Brown. "It's the least visible. You can take a lot of voters, march them into the county courthouse and put a gun to the head of most voters and ask, 'Who occupies this office and what do they do?' and they cannot tell you."
He said that reforming how county governments conduct business, such as assuming more responsibility in handling excess food money from sheriffs, "remains below the radar screen."
"The sheriff and probate judges ... sometimes they can have hotly contested races, but that is even becoming more rare now," said Brown.
Others see the 1939 law and its link to an unwieldy state constitution. Some legislators are pushing for a constitutional convention this year to review tax and budget laws.
"The practice of letting sheriffs keep 'excess food funds' for personal use is an utter abomination, and an embarrassment to the state, and the need to prohibit the practice is yet one more of the many reasons Alabama's constitution needs major revisions," said Quin Hillyer, a conservative columnist based in Mobile.
Racist roots
The lack of action in Montgomery has also caught the attention of Southern political scholars, who believe Alabama is clinging to a law that has its roots in racist systems.
The practice of pocketing the money, they say, dates much further than the Great Depression era when the 1939 law was written.
The situation, they say, harkens back to the day of a racist system of convicts leased as labor. The system was used in Alabama and other states from the period of the Civil War to World War II.
"It's astounding that Alabama would allow laws and practices associated with the most horrible nightmares of its past to remain in active use today," said Douglas Blackmon, author of the 2009 Pultizer Prize-winning book "Slavery by Another Name," which explores forced labor of imprisoned black men after the Civil War.
That book, for instance, chronicles the personal payouts to a Shelby County sheriff in 1906, from the excesses that remained in monthly inmate feeding. Inmates, almost all who were black, were fed cornmeal mush and port fat, while the sheriff profited from the excesses.
"Any defense of this practice today is abominable and clearly mirrors the racist practices and beliefs of the past," said Derryn Moten, chairman of the history and political science department at Alabama State University in Montgomery.
Said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas: "Most of these laws were taken off the books, particularly as you entered the 50s, 60s and 70s regarding prison reform. Apparently, not in Alabama."
Blackmon, who is a senior fellow in presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, said maintaining the law should alarm Alabamians weary of their reputation outside of state lines.
"These are the kinds of things decent citizens of Alabama should think about when they get frustrated with people elsewhere in the country seeming to forever 'beat up' on their home state and the whole South for things that supposedly 'happened a long time ago,'" he said. "It's hard to be mad, when things like this are still happening, and the Legislature apparently isn't troubled about it."