Inmate meals fattened up sheriff's pay

PARK RAPIDS, MINN. - The for-profit breakfast service a sheriff ran in the jail here has left egg on a face or two, and the whiff, some say, of something other than bacon.

For eight years, according to public records, taxpayers were overcharged up to 100 percent for each breakfast served in the Hubbard County jail, and Sheriff Gary Mills captured all the profits without incident.

The practice, which officials called an archaic holdover from the days when many Minnesota sheriffs lived in their jails and their wives cooked for the inmates, finally ended last December, when the county started paying the company that was doing the jail's lunch and dinner to also provide breakfast.

Mills sued the county for lost income, and the county made a counterclaim for all of Mills' accumulated profits, saying it hasn't been legal for Minnesota sheriffs to make money feeding inmates for at least 30 years.

The case is set to go to trial next spring, but both sides said they recently reached a settlement that they'll ask the County Board to approve next month. Details are being withheld pending that approval. Mills said he'd "love to" comment further but won't because of the court case.

Though it may look like scam and eggs, Mills' attorney, Steven Fuller of Bemidji, argues that it's not:

"People have tried to make it sound like something evil, but this is the way it was done in many rural counties going back decades," he said. "One of the ways a county that liked their sheriff could pay him more was to give him something extra for providing meals."

Paying Minnesota sheriffs to feed prisoners "was a very common practice," Jim Franklin, head of the Minnesota Sheriffs Association, said in an e-mail. He added that as counties stopped this practice, many opted to increase their sheriff's salary.

Breakfast 'buyout'

It's unclear how much Mills netted annually from charging the county up to $2 for breakfasts that he arranged -- according a document prepared by County Attorney Donovan Dearstyne -- for 50 cents to a dollar each.

But there's a ballpark indicator: When commissioners cut out Mills as the middle man, they also approved a $1,000 monthly "stipend" for him as long as he remained sheriff, to offset his loss.

The food service's fee represented such a savings that even after paying Mills' stipend, taxpayers would still come out ahead, commissioners said then.

Commissioner Dick Devine said the board had mistakenly believed Mills had the right to provide the breakfasts. "It was a 5-0 vote to buy out his contract," he said. "That's what we felt we had to do to make the switchover."

At the same meeting, board members approved a cost-of-living adjustment to Mills' salary, bringing it to $73,721 -- about average in north-central Minnesota. With the stipend, his annual compensation was almost $86,000.

But after two lame-duck commissioners were replaced in January, members began questioning the stipend and were joined by other county officials.

During one meeting, according to the Park Rapids Enterprise, County Coordinator Jack Paul said: "I don't understand how we can pay someone for doing nothing," and newly seated Commissioner Donald Carlson remarked: "This is not transparent enough in today's society. Our constituents would be unhappy with this."

Citing the suit, Carlson declined to comment for this story, and Paul could not be reached.

The county sought legal advice, and Assistant Minnesota Attorney General Kenneth Raschke Jr. wrote in April that "we are not aware of any statutory authority for payment to the sheriff of $2 per prisoner for providing meals that cost between $.50 and $1."

Raschke wrote that changes to state law in the 1970s prevent counties from paying sheriffs extra for feeding prisoners and require counties instead to contract for meal service or reimburse the sheriff's office for actual expenses.

Furthermore, Raschke wrote, a law passed in 1996 -- two years before Mills took office -- prohibits county officials from making money from a county contract.

Armed with that opinion, commissioners rescinded Mills' stipend.

Settlement may budge it

In July, Mills sued, saying the county "arbitrarily" decreased his pay.

The complaint drafted by Mills' attorney says that the extra income stems from a tradition that "over the years ... was an effort to assure fair payment to sheriffs while disguising it within the county budget as a meal stipend."

In a letter to commissioners, Fuller wrote: "Obviously, Hubbard County maintained this stipend program much longer than other counties and apparently did not recognize the changes that were made to the law. Sheriff Mills should not be blamed for that."

Fuller argued that the county should keep its promise to compensate Mills for lost income, as he said other counties have done, by increasing his salary.

In the county's answer and counterclaim, Scott T. Anderson, a Minneapolis attorney who specializes in local government budget issues, wrote that it would be illegal to pay Mills a stipend for doing nothing, or to pay him to refrain from doing something that was illegal in the first place.

"The sheriff mistakenly asserted he had a right to provide breakfast and that he should therefore receive some compensation for giving that up, and certain county board members also mistakenly believed that," Anderson wrote.

The counterclaim adds that it's a gross misdemeanor for a county official to make money from a county contract. However, Anderson said he doesn't think Mills intended to break the law.

Anderson said that although the county appears to have the law on its side, both sides have an interest in avoiding the time, expense and acrimony of a trial.

"There are lots of costs to litigation," he said "Ultimately the public ends up being the loser."

Larry Oakes • 1-218-727-7344

Larry Oakes • loakes@startribune.com