ASHLAND —
The Boyd County Fiscal Court no longer requires the services of its jail consultant, which helped it move toward the creation of the Northeastern Regional Jail Authority, officials said Wednesday.
Boyd County Judge-Executive William “Bud” Stevens confirmed that consultant Joey Stanton is no longer being paid by the county for his services.
“The work that we had to get to this point is done. Until we go further with this, we have no need for his services,” said Stevens. He added the fiscal court does not anticipate a future need for Stanton’s services.
However, Stevens also confirmed that Stanton was overpaid $2,000 — a month’s salary — by the court in August. He said officials are in the process of recovering the overpayment. Stanton was paid $24,000 annually by the court as well as mileage expenses.
Carter County Fiscal Court, which recently hired Stanton as a consultant toward the creation of the regional jail, will no longer have him on the payroll after Friday, according to Carter County Judge-Executive Charles Wallace.
However, when speaking to a reporter by phone around 5 p.m on Wednesday, Wallace said that Stanton remained employed by the court. “We just hired him,” he said, noting he hadn’t spoken to Stevens about Boyd’s decision to let Stanton go. “He’s doing a lot of research and reports on it (regional jail) and getting stuff together for us,” Wallace said.
However, about an hour later, Wallace told the Grayson Journal-Times that Stanton would not be on Carter County’s payroll after Friday. “We can always bring him back if we need further assistance,” Wallace told the newspaper.
The Boyd Fiscal Court first hired Stanton, who operates as Stanton Consulting LLC, in 2011 to help it rein in costs at the Boyd County Detention Center. He later began working on the regional jail proposal, which was approved by Carter and Boyd counties late last month. Implementation of the regional jail is currently on hold pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by the Kentucky Jailers Association and the jailers of Boyd and Carter counties, who are seeking to block it.
The suit alleges the jail authority is illegal because it doesn’t conform to state statutes governing regional jails, because it would usurp authority granted to the two jailers by the state constitution and because the meeting at which the Carter County Fiscal Court approved first reading of the enabling legislation for the authority was held in violation of the Kentucky Open Meetings Act.
Stanton has been a lightning rod of controversy over the regional jail, and is currently the subject of a number of open records request appeals with the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office filed by Lexington attorney James Deckard, who is representing the plaintiff’s in the case seeking to block it.
CARRIE STAMBAUGH can be reached at cstambaugh@dailyindependent.com or (606)
326-2653.
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