Lehigh County Commissioners Meeting 3/10/2021
Tags: COVID, Incarceration, Labor Unions, Housing
What: Lehigh County Board of Commissioners Meeting
Date: March 10th, 2021 at 7:30pm
Summary:
The Lehigh County Board of Commissioners meeting for March 10, 2021, chaired by Commissioner Geoff Brace over Zoom, kicked off with over forty minutes of public comment and discussion, all concerning the circumstances of the prisoners in Lehigh County Jail (LCJ). Defense attorney Ed Angelo began by pointing out that many inmates are being held in solitary confinement, 23 hrs/day, 7 days/wk, in 6 ft x 9 ft cells for months at time, not for any offense committed but, presumably, for purposes of Covid control in LCJ. He noted that international human rights organizations say that solitary confinement longer than 15 days has deleterious mental health effects and verges on torture. Wondering aloud if any of the county judges were listening to the Zoom call, Angelo urged redoubled efforts on early parole and release of pretrial detainees held for lack of cash bail. Saying that we should be “appalled, incensed and ashamed” of the situation, he asked the Board specifically to take action to fund the reopening of the 400-bed Community Correction Center as a venue for visitation, “virtual re-entry” and social distancing of low risk inmates. Commenter Maureen Simonetta expressed concern about the trauma resulting from the “cruel and unusual punishment” of solitary confinement for 23 hrs/day. Enid Santiago told the Board that she had been receiving phone calls from inmates about every 2 days, describing “inhumane” conditions--uncooked food, a confiscated asthma inhaler, a recent suicide, a suspension of cleaning and a lack of religious services or other programs. Santiago went on to say that younger inmates, faced with repeated delays in their trial dates, and unable, under the Covid restrictions, to get advice from older inmates, are desperate and feeling increased pressure to accept unfair plea bargains. Christine Condon of Lehigh Valley DSA (LVDSA), echoing the concerns of the previous commenters, said that we are breaking people in prison, thereby creating future societal problems, and that our society deems prison inmates disposable. She went on to ask if any of the commissioners had made surprise spot check visits to LCJ. Commissioner Amy Zanelli responded that she had made such a visit in late January or early February, found LCJ to be “immaculately clean” (“You could eat off the floor”) and “almost eerily quiet” and observed that “our guests were very contented on their tablets”. Zanelli received some subsequent pushback regarding this generally positive picture and prisoner contentment with the computer tablets. Both Simonetta and Santiago asserted that the tablet use was not free and minutes must be purchased through the commissary, although Zanelli replied that her understanding was that this applied only to time spent using them to make calls to family etc. on the outside. Santiago expressed doubt that prisoners would speak openly to a public official (i.e. Zanelli).
A discussion among Commissioners Brace and Harrington and Ed Angelo brought out the fact that lengthy pretrial detentions have been enabled by an emergency suspension of “Rule 600”, Pennsylvania’s implementation of the U.S. Constitution’s sixth amendment guarantee of a speedy trial. When in effect, Rule 600 mandates a trial within 180 days for an imprisoned defendant or one year if out on bail. Harrington noted that a new judicial order had pushed back resumption of jury trials from April 1st to May 1st and extended the suspension of Rule 600 to July 2nd. Citing the earlier comments from Enid Santiago, Angelo spoke of the dangerous role the Rule 600 suspension plays in pressuring defendants to agree to a plea deal. Commissioner Brace stated repeatedly that he felt that a one year wait for a trial while detained was unacceptable, but that this was entirely under control of the judiciary and not the Board of Commissioners.
It is clear that the Covid pandemic has served to expose and exacerbate the brutalities of the court-police-prison system for controlling the poor, which was already an affront to simple human decency and fairness. We also need to be clear where the power lies in this system in Lehigh County. While the Board of Commissioners has given a sympathetic hearing to the plight of LCJ prisoners and might be able do some things to ease their present circumstances, on a day-to-day basis it is the County District Attorney and County Judges that make the fundamental decisions on criminal charges, bail and sentencing. These are all elective offices with long terms, 6 years for the DA (Jim Martin for the last 20+ years, last reelected 2019), 10 years for judges. It is fair to say that such officials can be a little touchy when confronted with requests for public transparency. See for example this story on County Controller Mark Pinsley’s attempts to get information on LCJ prisoners unable to post cash bail. That said, the Board does approve the budget for the DA’s office and the courts. That funding, similar to police funding in the municipalities, should be a subject of scrutiny, a pressure point in the ongoing struggle to replace the “Justice” System with something worthy of the name. And it wouldn’t hurt to have someone like Omar Ray, LV DSA-endorsed candidate for County Commissioner, helping to apply that pressure.
The latter part of the Commissioners’ meeting featured several positive developments: approval of a program to disburse ~$24M in combined state and federal relief funds for emergency rental assistance (ERAP), administered through CACLV and Catholic Charities (application form); approval of a program (CHIRP) to provide ~$4M in grants to hospitality industry businesses disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, administered through The Rising Tide Community Fund (application form); approval of a motion to bring to a vote, at the next meeting, the collective bargaining agreement reached between the workers at Cedarbrook Senior Care and Rehabilitation, represented by UFCW Local 1776KS, and Lehigh County, owner and operator of the facility. The Cedarbrook workers represented by UFCW include certified nursing assistants, housekeepers, food service workers and some therapeutic staff, a workforce that, in the words of Commissioner Brace, “have gone to absolute hell and back” [during the pandemic], working without a contract or raise since the end of 2019. Commissioner Hartzell noted the workers will get a big check for back pay as part of the agreement. Hartzell and others had heartfelt praise for the Cedarbrook workers and the quality of care they provide. Commissioner Elbich called Cedarbrook “a great asset”, noted that other PA counties are “selling their [nursing] homes, their resources...all going private and having difficulties” and concluded “We do have a great resource here and we should continue to support it”.
Commissioner Elbich raises a really salient point here. Increasingly over the last 50 years or so, the forces of Capital, through their domination of political institutions, have made the extraction of wealth from public resources, sometimes termed ‘the commons’, into a booming growth ‘industry’. Targets for extraction can range from public lands (or their mineral and timber rights) to the fruits of publicly funded scientific research to educational and caregiving institutions to simply the cash inherent in governmental taxing power, accessed through corporate tax abatements. Although the political pressure is relentless and its supporting business-can-do-it-better mythology is pervasive, it doesn’t always work. An attempt to privatize Social Security was rebuffed during the Bush II administration. The Post Office is still with us, and may yet survive Louis DeJoy’s efforts to prep it for private plundering. So, the survival of an institution like Cedarbrook is a cause for celebration, and an accomplishment that should be preserved and built on.
The issues at LCJ are only kept on the Commissioners' agenda by the people - those who speak up during the "Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items" portion of the meeting. WE need to keep attention to this issues alive.