DeeAnn Lawrence, Northampton County's Corrections Director, told County Council in April that there were just 161 corrections officers (COs) in a jail even though there should be 212. Things are going from bad to worse.
Brandon Dunstane, the county's budget administrator, reviewed the county's finances over the first half of this year. We all recognize that the vacancies at the jail create a stressful environment for staffers who can be and are mandated to pull 16-hour shifts. But this also places huge financial burden on the county.
Dunstane told Council Prez Ken Kraft that corrections officers are now down to 135 from what was reported in April. As a result, it has already burned through its $2 million overtime budget for 2026. Dunstane believes the county is on track to spend $4.5 million in OT, more than twice the budget.
The county's second largest financial concern is Gracedale, the county-owned nursing home. Dunstane noted that the county adopted a budget amendment early in 2026 to make a $6.8 million county contribution to the nursing home because it ended 2025 with a $6.8 million deficit.
After this contribution, however, it soon became apparent that Gracedale was not as badly off as originally thought. Some of its Medicaid applications (Gracedale usually has about 100 Medicaid applications outstanding at any given moment), were approved during the first three months of 2026, and this reduced the $6.8 million deficit to just $3.6 million. As a result, Gracedale has a fund balance of $3.2 million which might be large enough to cover this year's deficit.
Dunstance stated that Gracedale's deficit at the end of June was $1.1 million with an average census of 475. This is below the 520 census needed to break even, and it continues to drop and is currently in the 460s. Dunstane predicts the census at year's end may be more than $2.2 million. But if I understand him correctly, a county contribution for 2026 might be unnecessary because of its $3.2 million fund balance.
He also mentioned a few other items of interest.
Dunstane indicated that the cost of the daycare at Gracedale comes out of the Human Resources budget. I believe this more appropriately belongs with Gracedale budget since this perk exists for Gracedale employees.
Durstane indicated that two county sheriff cars were totaled and had to be replaced.
He finally indicated that Executive Tara Zrinski, who can be seen just about everywhere, is blowing through her travel budget for 2026. He will be seeking a small increase for her to continue to attend conferences and lobby for the county.
She shouldn’t be traveling she should be filling vacancies throughout the county offices. The pay is too low for prison correction officers hence no one stays. She needs to start thinking about raising taxes since Lamont from Sanford and Sons left her a big mess.
ReplyDeleteLamont from Sanford and Son lol he’s just like the show ran the junkyard into the ground.
DeleteYou do not pay property tax what do you care?
ReplyDelete"He finally indicated that Executive Tara Zrinski, who can be seen just about everywhere, is blowing through her travel budget for 2026"
ReplyDeleteWhy does ChatGPT Barbie need any travel budget?
see that folks it funny how he don’t lead with the good gracedale news
ReplyDeleteUm, it is not exactly good. The county contribution was higher than it needed to be but was still $3.6 million and is $1.1 million in the first half of this year and we will at least be double that at year's end. We will be lucky to escape without a county contribution. That's not good news.
DeleteJust another episode of the continuing saga of the reality show As Norco Mismanages.
ReplyDeleteTZ needs to quit promoting herself and get to work solving problems.
ReplyDeleteIt’s time to send prisoners to other jails. It’s cheaper than paying the overtime.
ReplyDeleteLOL the county is broke but Tara is traveling and eating out, staying in hotels, ect to bloviate politics on our dime. If your attending training its one thing, but it sounds like she’s using taxpayer funded travel to push her politics. She has totally ignored the jail and the staff are literally slowly being killed. Average life expectancy for a 25 year CO is 68 but here in our shit county it’s probably less than that. I feel for those guys at the jail that have 15 yrs in and are in their 40s or older. You aren’t starting all over you’re stuck.
ReplyDeleteWhy does it sound "like she’s using taxpayer funded travel to push her politics."? Can you cite examples of her pushing her politics rather than promoting the county? I agree she is everywhere, and that's good for her politically, but it is also good for the county, which all too often is the forgotten government. If she is out there saying "I hate Republicans" or "Trump sucks," that would be one thing. But she appears to me to be promoting the county and what it does. I have no problem with it. No, I do not like seeing public officials wined and dined at the rooftop of some swanky restaurant, but I do like her visits to Gracedale, senior centers and at community events.
DeleteJust because Tara Z might be able to take county travel money to drive from Easton over to Gracedale or a senior center doesn’t mean she has to. Going to a conference in Harrisburg, that’s fine for travel reimbursement.
DeleteActually the life expectancy is 58.
Delete@8:11 Actually Lori Vargo Heffner did that when she spent $3000 to go to Florida for a conference and never gave report to the Council, and none of that information that she supposedly gained and learned was a benefit to the County. Lori Vargo Heffner is the one that used taxpayer dollars for her own personal vacation.
DeleteOk. So let’s have it your way. She’s still blowing through her travel budget to promote what you call the county, but what’s she’s really promoting is her policies. In your own words “ is blowing through her travel budget for 2026. He will be seeking a small increase for her to continue to attend conferences and lobby for the county. “ Where and how is the money spent? How much is this budget. Is it on out of county travel??hotels? Meals? What conferences and what are they for? Or is it just gas and a county car? It was a very vague statement designed to get a rise out of people. Given the fiscal situation the county is in, this is not a good sign that she can’t even pay attention to her own travel budget, no??
DeleteWhen I worked for the county we couldn’t leave the state for a conference
DeleteOf course Zrinski is everywhere- she's already on the prowl for her next gig.
ReplyDeleteSo McClure appeared to be a great person for not raising taxes, now we are going to pay dearly. He needs to be out of the Solicitor's office and out of the County totally.
ReplyDeleteIt is no secret that huge amounts of overtime when added to an employees salary right before that employee's retirement, increases their pensions significantly. Their pension calculations are based on their three highest years of employment and that includes overtime as part of the salary. Even though an employee started with the County at a wage of twenty thousand dollars and thirty years later that person retires with an eighty thousand dollar salary, that salary is calculated at the three highest years of employment wages. The County will have to make up the difference and it will easily run into several million dollars for the prison alone.
ReplyDeleteHow does this pertain to the massive boom in overtime/ mandated double shifts. Very few officers are approaching those final few years. More than half of the depleted roster have a meager 2+ years of experience.
DeleteThis is not a retirement plan problem. This is an issue with poor recruitment and poorer retention practices.
Except that there are finite amount of shifts to fill and if all those shifts are manned, no (or very little) overtime exists.
DeleteThe problem is they were warned. Why should someone come in and deal with prison-like nonsense (fights, assaults, slinging of bodily fluids, suicide attempts, etc), when they can go to Wawa for a comparable wage and none of that nonsense? Their starting wages should be increased and I heard they no longer get benefits packages on retirement. That true?
There have been 1000 corrections officers hired in the last 12 years. Where did they all go ?
ReplyDeleteDisneyland?
DeleteGracedale has not been at full census for years. Every month we heard that there were new ideas to improve staffing (not agency) and census. Nothing worked (including a costly daycare). Sell some Medicaid bed licenses and lower the overall census. There appears to be little, unfortunately, to crow about at Gracedale. Wonder how the new continuum of care guy is doing?
ReplyDeleteGracedale is on the right financial path. John Brownpants said it would need 15 millions and Bernie kept repeating his lie over and over.
ReplyDeleteThe right path. Needing 3 to 7 million to stay afloat while there is no plan how to raise money. Good luck on that path.
DeleteYou must be joking, Kelly Keegan.
DeleteMeanwhile at Personal & Finance council approves an assistant male DA to come in at step 3 but wouldn’t approve a female Director of Fiscal Affairs to come in at step 3. The courts will do whatever they want anyway but there again, the system is never fair.
ReplyDeleteIts actually 123 officers. Lol. Dropping every day
ReplyDeleteWhoa! If that’s true that’s a full blown crisis. Gracedale sucks all the air out of the room. She presented the bazillion dollar plan for Gracedale village, what’s the plan for the jail?
DeleteGet agency at the jail. You will pay through the nose but staff will get proper rest.
DeleteCouldn’t the problem of too few correction officers be solved if the county bought up the land around the jail and then built housing there for the corrections employees?
ReplyDeleteThen the county could add shops and restaurants and soon everyone would be flocking to work at the jail! Flocking!
For now we should pay someone to look into it for the next six to nine months and hope that people stop talking about the problem. After all, by then there will surely be another bad problem to take its place.
BO, please feel free to write glowing posts in the near future lauding me (Anon) for my flocking good vision and creativity.
LOL County Jail Village!!!
DeleteSend the prisoners out to other counties. It will save on OT. The 10 richest County employees will make less money.
ReplyDeleteLet Kraft step back in. Let’s see what he thinks .
DeleteHe's a joke.
DeleteWill it be less???
DeleteDon't create new financial problems while ignoring existing ones.
Those top 10 employees live at the jail. You want that to change fix the staffing issues. But the county won't. They know the one and only issue to getting staff in the door.
DeleteWonder why Ken Kraft left the jail in the first place ? Surely he made more money working there than on Council. Was he asked to leave ?
DeleteProperty taxes will go higher and higher in Northampton county
ReplyDeleteSounds like someone needs to foia little miss fancy pants travel logs and expenses...
ReplyDeleteWhat stands out to me is the lack of accountability.
ReplyDeleteThe jail is reportedly down to 135 corrections officers, with overtime projected to reach $4.5 million. And the county just completed a salary study, so the answer cannot always be, “raise the starting pay.”
Pay is important, but so are working conditions, mandatory 16-hour shifts, morale, leadership and retention. If people are continuing to leave, somebody needs to be asking why.
Then we have Gracedale continuing to operate at a deficit, questions about expenses being charged to Human Resources, and now the County Executive may need more money for travel.
Before anyone even thinks about raising taxes, taxpayers deserve to know what the corrective plan is.
This is public money. The answer cannot always be to spend more. At some point, there has to be accountability for how these departments are being managed.
It’s about leadership. Talk is cheap where’s the leadership? 8 years of McClure and now someone who’s never run anything in her life. Not good!
DeleteI don’t think anyone truly understands the damage of being that short staffed really means for the prison. It’s unsafe folks. It’s a prison. A place where people who can not follow the rules in society go to when they have committed crimes. If there is nobody left to run the place, then what ? We should just let them all go freely? Maybe the people who are in the positions of filling these spots should be questioned on why they can not get them filled ? As for the officers, they are tired. They miss their family’s. They miss having a “normal” life. Their stress and anxiety levels are through the roof. With all of this, plus the lack of sleep it is unhealthy mentally, emotionally, and physically. Its damaging to personal lives and overall well being. Money doesn’t replace loss time or personal health. Yeah it does pad pensions and help financially for some, but it’s the loss of the other stuff that matters more. You can never get more time back. It’s a career nobody wants. It’s a work environment that is unsafe to begin with. All they want is proper staffing levels and appropriate pay that does not come in the form of overtime. 16 hour mandations are unreasonable and unsafe. Nobody has a clear mind and poor decision making will eventually cost the county dearly. It’s excessive and is only going to get worse. And for all the people saying ship the inmates to other county’s, good luck. At the end of the day, the people that have been elected in need to start fixing the problems that lay with in this county before it is gets worse. And getting worse, only affects the tax payers more.
ReplyDeleteThe officers union is part of the problem as well. Hiding information from the body.
ReplyDeleteWhat information are they hiding???
DeleteThe truth, the full story of what is being offered. The union has been a big part of the problem for years, way before the current union leadership. I'm not putting it all on the union, but your body has no faith in the leadership at all. The past administration is mostly at fault, but the union plays a bigger role at how bad things are than they will admit.
DeleteWhat's the truth?? What's the true story and offers??? Sounds like you know???
DeleteNot sure if NorCo jail is at full capacity, but at one time Lehigh County rented space to ICE to house detainees there. They made quite a profit on it.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if that’s still available, but something like that could solve the financial side of things. Obviously, that doesn’t solve the issue of too few officers, but if you could bing in enough cash to raise the pay enough, it might attract more officers as well.
Naturally, Zrinski’s radical non-cooperation policies won’t let an agreement with ICE happen, but maybe there’s another similar arrangement that would be palatable to her.
I say all that with the realization that the bad working conditions at the NorCo prison might be purposeful, and will be used to justify the elimination of prisons (or reduction in capacity) that that the democrats actually want.
The jail doesn't meet the requirements to house federal inmates.
DeleteIts nice to see that nothing has changed at NCP. . The COs need to leave AFSCME.
ReplyDeleteFunny how the jail floats 12 hour shifts to solve the OT issue. They forget, their own study showed with 12 hour shifts, you need more than 210 officers, not less. They also mention the $4.5 million in OT costs, but not that they save over $5 million in salary and benefits being 80+ short.
DeleteFunny fact, the union officer that did the math proving that 12hr shifts won't work is now working for HR trying to enforce 12hr shifts. Funny how a 30k increase in pay , weekends / holidays off along with 8hr days changes the view. Lol
DeleteTotally agree. AFCSME lost the state COs about 20 years ago. They just lost all the parole Agents. They represent way too many job titles in state and local government. Corrections is unique and should be represented as such.
Delete