A Lake County councilman on Monday sparred with the sheriff over how money from the jail’s telecommunications services for inmates are being directed into a fund only he controls.
Councilman Jamal Washington, D-Merrillville, asked Sheriff John Buncich why money from the county’s contract with Telmate, which provides phone, video calling and Internet tablet access to inmates, go into a commissary fund controlled by the sheriff instead of the general fund overseen by the County Council. The sheriff said it’s been the county’s past practice to use money from telecommunications services to fund training and equipment through the commissary fund.
Washington said his problem is that money is going into the commissary fund but the council, which is the county’s fiscal body, cannot touch that money.
“We don’t have any control over that,” Washington said.
The council and Board of Commissioners both receive a report on the status of the commissary fund on Jan. 1 and July 1, Buncich said, and that fund is audited annually by the State Board of Accounts.
A 2016 report to the county showed the department had received $623,413.85 into the commissary fund, according to documents from the county. The Sheriff’s Department received more than $300,000 as commission from its Telmate contract in 2016.
Washington said he knows the contract is a good source of revenue but that’s not his point.
“We don’t have any oversight, sheriff,” Washington said.
The department is a large agency, Buncich said, and the cost of providing proper training is high. He said the training and equipment paid for out of the commissary fund would need to come from elsewhere if that revenue was moved into the general fund.
Washington not only questioned the lack of oversight of the commissary fund but whether an amendment to direct monies into that fund was signed by the sheriff and not the Board of Commissioners.
John Bushemi, an attorney for the Sheriff’s Department, said the contract, first signed in 2011, is between the department as the customer and Telmate as the provider. That agreement said money from the contract went to the customer, Bushemi said, and there’s not a difference between the commissary fund and the Sheriff’s Department.
“There’s a huge difference,” Washington said.
Council attorney Ray Szarmach asked why the money went into the commissary fund when the contract first took effect in 2011 but an amendment specifying how the funds were directed wasn’t signed until later.
Bushemi said it was custom and practice to use money from the phone and telecommunications services and put it into the commissary fund.
Buncich said when he was sheriff in the 1990s, money from the contracts with AT&T and other providers likewise went into the commissary fund instead of the general fund.
“Why are we not getting the money?” Washington asked.
Szarmach said state statute allows commissary money to be spent by a sheriff’s department without an appropriation from a county council.
Washington said he didn’t understand why that money went into the commissary and not the general fund.
“That’s my frustration,” Washington said.
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