The Associated Press

LaRue County Judge-executive Tommy Turner remembers 1986, when his small central Kentucky county's annual jail budget was $70,000.

Since then, it has ballooned to $1.3 million, and Turner has joined the chorus of other judge-executives who consider swelling jail budgets the most pressing financial problem facing Kentucky counties.

"The jails are going to destroy small counties," said Estill Judge-executive Wallace Taylor. In Estill, 20 percent of the county's budget is tied up in jail funding.

This year, Kentucky counties will transfer about $100 million from their general funds to their jail budgets, said Vince Lang, executive director of the Kentucky Judge/Executive Association.

County officials are expected to press the state soon for help in dealing with exploding jail budgets.

On Thursday, judge-executives, magistrates and county commissioners from all over Kentucky will gather in Owensboro for a conference. Their first guests will be members of the legislature's Interim Joint Committee on Local Government.

The county officials are collecting data showing how much each of Kentucky's counties must contribute to its jail, and a list of measures the state could take to ease their financial burden.

Between 1982 and 2001, local expenditures on corrections rose 455 percent nationwide, said Dag Ryen, an analyst for the Kentucky League of Cities.

Officials said the top reason for the rising jail budgets is an overcrowded prison population.

In the past, jails made money because counties made a profit on state prisoners. The state paid counties more than it actually cost to house the inmates.

But counties have to cover for local prisoners, and if their numbers increase, there are fewer beds for the lucrative state prisoners.

In Pulaski County, the three defendants in the slaying of Sheriff Sam Catron were incarcerated a combined 624 days while awaiting trial, Pulaski Judge-executive Darrell BeShears said. The county got nothing for housing them.

"They didn't commit crimes against Pulaski County," he said. "Why are we keeping them for the commonwealth of Kentucky?"

To generate revenue, many counties have created new taxes or raised existing ones, said Lang of the judge/executive association, and about 60 counties now have occupational license taxes. But some have run afoul of legislators who have signed no-tax pledges and oppose even local-option taxes.

Even closing a jail doesn't halt the red ink.

Thirty-three counties have closed their jails and made arrangements to house prisoners elsewhere. But they must pay those other counties to do that, and they also incur transportation and some medical costs.

Nonetheless, Lang said, when he was judge-executive in Hart County, "the best fiscal move I made was to close my jail."

A handful of jails are actually making money.

One is in Grayson, a small county of about 24,000 people with a large 462-bed jail. Besides prisoners from his county, neighboring Edmonson County and the state, Jailer Joey Stanton takes inmates from Indiana and the federal government.

Both pay better than Kentucky, which gives counties about $26 a day to house prisoners and $1.50 for health care. Indiana pays $35 and picks up medical bills. The U.S. government pays about $40.