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| Report Complete on Troubled Alabama Jail |
| By Birmingham News |
| Published: 10/30/2002 |
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A consultant has delivered a much-anticipated review of the Mobile County Metro Jail, which has been plagued by management problems and a high-profile inmate death, but the Sheriff's Department is withholding the document from public review. Since June, the Mobile Register has periodically asked when the report would be complete. On October 22, department spokesman Shane McBryde said the report had arrived but it would not be released until department staff and the County Commission reviewed it. McBryde said the document would be available to the public in 'eight to 10 days' -- close to the date of the Nov. 5 election. Sheriff Jack Tillman, a Republican, is running for re-election against James Mayo, a Democrat. 'We're not refusing to release anything,' McBryde said. 'We have not had a chance to thoroughly get into the meat of the report.' Dennis Bailey, an Alabama Press Association lawyer, said the report is a public record, according to state law. The department does not have a legal basis to delay access to it, he said. 'When you're talking about a 10- or 15-page document that's in the hands of the sheriff, and it wouldn't take five minutes to get a copy for a member of the public, then it should take five minutes,' Bailey said. 'But there's no case, no attorney general's opinion, that supports the idea that 'We can hold it until we get a full chance to read it or send it to where we want it to go.'' Mayo claimed the report has been complete for a month and said Tillman is withholding it until after the election. 'They're hiding it,' he said. 'Tillman's got it. But he don't want to release it, because it says just what I'm telling you: You can't eliminate personnel just to save money, (but) pay overtime.' Jail employees were paid about $1.5 million in overtime during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 and about $1.8 million the year before, according to the county. As of August, when the Sheriff's Department produced its budget proposal, there were 212 employees and 30 vacancies in the jail. The consultant who did the report, John Milosovich of Voorhis Associates in Lafayette, Colo., did a study of the jail when it opened in 1990. According to that report, 283 employees were needed to properly staff the facility. |
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