Erie County will spend $290,000 this year to hire more medical and mental health staff

for the county Holding Center and to hire a new jail official to implement the upgrades

ordered under the recent settlement with the U.S. Justice Department.

County lawmakers approved the spending Thursday in a series of budget maneuvers that

finance the jobs through December. The posts will need new outlays for 2011 and beyond.

The settlement signed last month addressed the most pressing aspect of the Justice

Department's lawsuit against Erie County's jail management team — the alleged indifference to

Holding Center suicides.

Holding Center inmates take their own lives at almost five times the national average for

local jails, according to a Justice Department consultant. Erie County officials dispute the

calculation because, they assert, it does not account for the Holding Center's busy nature.

The jail receives more than 20,000 defendants a year.

Gallery: Photos from the tour

Video: A look inside the jail

Among the key Justice Department requirements: Erie County will hire a deputy jail

superintendent whose only mission will be to ensure the deployment of many specific suicide-

prevention measures.

Some upgrades are under way, such as retrofitting cell fixtures so they can't support

nooses. The agreement also requires the nursing staff to assess inmates in the acute

detoxification unit every eight hours, and for Erie County to implement a detoxification

training program for the jail's mental health professionals and staff.

The new deputy superintendent will likely come from within the ranks of the jail

bureaucracy, a top aide to Sheriff Timothy B. Howard revealed Thursday.

In fact, documents indicate the official will receive "line-up pay," the perk that gives

Howard's appointees a half-hour of overtime wages daily regardless of whether they attend the

briefing that starts each shift for front-line jail deputies and corrections officers.

"The person for this job should come from the inside," stressed Brian D. Doyle, the

sheriff's former chief of administration who asked lawmakers to allocate money for the job

Thursday. Doyle is now chief of the sheriff's Civil Process Division.

Kristen Klein Wheaton, the first assistant county attorney who helped negotiate the

settlement, agreed with Doyle when they explained the budget moves to lawmakers. She said the

new deputy superintendent will need to work quickly.

"It's very difficult to bring someone from the outside up to speed," she said. "That's

another reason why the candidate may be an internal candidate. That person is going to have to

hit the ground running."

Still, some county lawmakers balked at the idea. Howard was first assigned to oversee the

jail system in 2005, when he served as undersheriff. Profound problems continued during the

years since.

For example, Howard was among the officials who in 2004 saw the need to modify air vents

because they were being used to hold nooses. But after six years he never completed a fix.

Under the settlement, vents are to be modified by Dec. 1.

Thomas A. Beilein, the state Commission of Correction chairman whose agency sued Erie

County over its Holding Center, has called Erie County's jail system the most troubled county

system in the state.

"Maybe this position should be filled from the outside, not from the inside," said

Legislator Thomas A. Loughran, D-Amherst, who reminded Doyle that certain top county officials

claimed for months that the Justice Department was merely acting as a prisoners' rights group

out to give inmates hotel amenities at taxpayer expense.

Legislature Chairwoman Barbara Miller-Williams, a Buffalo Democrat and former Buffalo

police officer, said the new deputy superintendent should care about conditions inside the

jail.

"It is very important that it be someone who has a good history and who cares about what's

going on ... because we have to do better," she said.

Regardless of legislative concerns about the Republican Howard, the sheriff will select the

new official, Doyle said, not the Legislature.

U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, who was on the Justice Department's negotiating team, had

no position Thursday on whether the new deputy superintendent should come from within the

ranks of the Jail Management Division because the person will be paid by county government and

its taxpayers.

The deputy jail superintendent is expected to collect some $46,000 for the remainder of

this year, indicating the annual salary will hover around $90,000.

His or her work — and the work of Erie County's jail management team — will be monitored by

a consultant, to be selected by the county and the Justice Department and paid by the county.

This "compliance officer" will report to U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny on Erie

County's progress in meeting the stipulated settlement agreement.

A few Legislature Democrats bristled at being forced to swiftly act on the new spending

rather than being given a week to examine the matters in a committee. But the full Legislature

unanimously approved the new job, and agreed to spend $105,000 to hire five new health

professionals to work in the Holding Center.

They also allocated $120,000 — in state grant money — to pay four more forensic mental health

professionals to supplement the forensic mental health staff at the Holding Center and

Correctional Facility.