By Billy Davis

Panola County is poised to lose its state inmates, and the state funds that pay for them, if the Miss. Department of Corrections acts on a cost-cutting plan.

Sheriff’s departments who participate in the Joint County State Work Program were told of the pending decision in a letter penned by MDOC Commissioner Chris Epps.

The state Department of Corrections is reacting to a $24.9 million cut to the department budget by Gov. Haley Barbour.

The governor has cut department budgets five percent, at MDOC and many others, in order to offset plunging state revenue.

Barbour and the state legislature, currently in session in Jackson, are feuding over how to fund state government amidst a gloomy financial outlook.

A Senate bill that passed 26-22 last week restored $1 million to Corrections, which Epps has said isn’t enough, according to The Clarion-Ledger.

Panola Sheriff Otis Griffin said Monday that Epps plans to meet with Mississippi sheriffs today in Jackson to discuss the looming cuts.

Panola County uses state inmate trusties inside and outside its county jail. The trusties collect trash, mow grass, and pick up roadside trash, among other duties, to shave a day from their sentence for each day they work.

MDOC pays Mississippi counties $20 a day for each inmate housed at the jail. In Panola, that reimbursement is currently for 28 inmates, which totals $204,000 annually to Panola County government.

The state legislature is “looking at all alternatives” as legislators mull trimming the state budget, said state Rep. Warner McBride.

 “People are maneuvering for the best positions on their budget. They’re trying to get the most money they can get,” McBride said.

“That’s why, when you hear talk of cutting mental health or Corrections, you hear how that would mean putting those people on the street,” he said.