Portsmouth Municipal Court presented Scioto County Commissioners with a big bill to cover the fees for folks under house arrest during the month of March.
The total bill for monitoring for just one month was nearly $13,000. That cost was for monitoring 52 defendants during the month at a cost of $14.50 per day per defendant. While defendants are often ordered to cover their own costs, very few do. Most defendants end up being declared indigent by the court. No defendants paid any portion of this cost for March, leaving the county to pay for all of it.
Fortunately, the county is still bringing in a pretty good income in sales tax. Scioto County took in $729, 972.11 from its permissive sales tax in February of 2022 and $364, 959.91 in actual sales tax for a total of nearly $1.1 million. That was up $74,000 from February of last year.