{"id":56,"date":"2026-09-28T17:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/salango-agrees-with-jail-bill-scrutiny\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T15:15:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T19:15:57","slug":"salango-agrees-with-jail-bill-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/salango-agrees-with-jail-bill-scrutiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Salango agrees with jail bill scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Story by Mike Nolting<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CHARLESTON, W.Va. <\/strong>\u2014 Additional questions are being asked about the accuracy of regional jail bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ben Salango<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, a coalition of 12 county commissions<\/a>, including the Monongalia County Commission, said several mistakes had been uncovered<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs we went through and each county started to hire individuals to look through the bills, we saw that at times the bills were 10 to 30 percent incorrect,\u201d Bloom said. \u201cThis is hundreds of thousands of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloom said the error rate is 10 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango expressed similar concerns during a Monday appearance on MetroNews \u201cTalkline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have three full-time employees going through these to find the mistakes,\u201d Salango said. \u201cI think in the first 60 days we found over $100,000 in billing errors, and that\u2019s a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coalition members said state officials submit invoices via a fax machine, and one of the counties received about 500 pages over a two-week period. Like Bloom, Salango is calling for the process to be brought into the 21st century and for lawmakers to reexamine the fees charged to operate the jail-prison system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we need administrative action to upgrade the systems so they are a little more tech-savvy,\u201d Salango said. \u201cAnd we also need some legislative help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salango said restructuring bail procedures would be an important step in the process. The total cost in Kanawha County could be substantially lowered if an agreement could be reached to limit the jail stay for non-violent offenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbout 42 percent of our jail population in the county was non-violent; lower-dollar crimes are what we have found through the Jail Bill Task Force,\u201d Salango said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many non-violent offenders are unable to bail out of jail, leading to an extended stay that costs counties exponentially more than if they were allowed to bond out of jail. He said there are some who may not appear if given that freedom, but the counties have to get control of the costs and correct the errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just the way this works, unfortunately,\u201d Salango said. \u201cBut we can\u2019t keep paying to keep people in jail for these non-violent crimes. That\u2019s all there is to it\u2014it\u2019s not sustainable, and it is not affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many states have eliminated the problem by privatizing corrections operations. Salango said a thorough review of the numbers is needed because changes are going to have to be made to keep counties solvent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hate to say it, but potentially that is an option,\u201d Salango said. \u201cI know one thing that cannot happen is we can\u2019t increase our jail bill by $1.7 million over the next two years; otherwise we\u2019re going to have to lay off deputies and half of the prosecutors\u2019 office, and we can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Story by Mike Nolting CHARLESTON, W.Va. \u2014 Additional questions are being asked about the accuracy of regional jail bills. Ben Salango Last week, a coalition of 12 county commissions, including the Monongalia County Commission, said several mistakes had been uncovered \u201cAs we went through and\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/wchsnetwork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}