The Bucks County Correctional Facility.
Credit: Tom Sofield/NewtownPANow.com
Overcrowding at the Bucks County Correctional Facility and handling the opioid crisis is costing taxpayers more.
On Wednesday, the Bucks County Commissioners approved spending $4 million to three departments to handle expenses that were not budgeted for when the 2017 fiscal year budget was approved last December.
County officials said the Coroner’s Office will receive $300,000, the District Attorney’s Office will get $400,000 and the Department of Corrections is slated to take in $3.3 million.
The additional funds needed for the Department of Corrections are tied to the opioid epidemic-related arrests and overcrowding at the prison, which forces the county to send local inmates out of county and increases costs. In July, the county spent $400,000 to house inmates at Kintock and Hoffman Hall in Philadelphia and the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.
The county spent $812,000 recently to begin working on plans to add extra capacity to the Bucks County Correctional Facility complex in Doylestown. The goal is to add more programs and space for inmates.
Commissioner Robert Loughery said the money for the coroner is needed due to the growing amount of overdose autopsies performed by the county. He said the coroner released data in July that showed a 38 percent increase in overdose autopsies year over year.
The opioid epidemic, which the county has taken steps to attempt to curb, also causes strain on the Bucks County Department of Children and Youth and the Drug and Alcohol Commission, Loughery said.
“The impact on the budget has been getting worse,” Finance Director David Boscola said of the opioid epidemic’s impact.
County COO Brian Hessenthaler said work has begun on the 2018 budget and the opioid epidemic and related process is taxing county spending. He called putting the budget together a “difficult process.”
