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The Harlan County Fiscal Court discussed the county’s continued subsidizing of an assistant Commonwealths Attorney position during a recent meeting.

Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley brought the matter to the attention of the magistrates early in the meeting.

“This is something we talked about during the budgeting process,” Mosley said. “Back before I came into office, the Fiscal Court had provided an amount of money each year to fund an assistant Commonwealth Attorney position.”

Mosley pointed out that the position aids in converting county inmates to state inmates, which assists with funding at the Harlan County Detention Center.

“The budget we adopted in June, we only budgeted for the first quarter of the fiscal year for that particular position,” Mosley said. “The hope was that we would see an increase in state inmates…we have seen an increase since June. The determining factor now would be do you all want to continue that for another quarter to see if it continues to improve. If so, we’ll need to do that in the way of a budget transfer to cover that.”

Mosley advised the Harlan County Detention Center has had success housing state inmates.

“The jail has had success in the transfer of inmates from other facilities,” Mosley said. “We are within two of the number I thought we would need to be at to justify continuance.”

Magistrate Paul Browning inquired if law enforcement was aware of the situation. Mosley explained he had met with the Harlan County Sheriff, Commonwealth’s Attorney and Kentucky State Police.

“We met to discuss the whole situation,” Mosley said. “This position has been viewed as a way to try to shift (inmates) from a county inmate perspective to get them through the court system and onto the state’s dime quicker. Prior to COVID, we had 165 state inmates then with the stroke of a pen, half of those went away, they got their sentences commuted. We’ve never been able to get back to the number that we were pre-COVID. The court system is just extremely slow.”

Magistrate James Howard made a motion to subsidize the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office for the second quarter of the fiscal year. Magistrate Jim Roddy seconded the motion. The motion passed with no objections.

In other fiscal court activity:

• A purchase agreement with Worldwide Equipment for a 2024 Mack Granite F, retroactive to Sept. 14, was approved.

• The court approved a resolution related to purchasing a 2024 Mack Granite F.

• The court approved an agreement with the Kentucky Association of Counties for a 2024 Mack Granite F.

• The court approved an equipment loan with Cumberland Valley Area Development District.

• The court granted permission to apply for 2023 KACo Insurance grant.