CCAWV has completed their Annual Regional Roundtable Meetings and is getting ready for the 2013 Legislative Session. Vivian was on the road most of November and December meeting with county commissioners and legislators to promote our 2013 Legislative Platform, which centers around regional jail cost containment issues.

We discussed CCA's support for new methodologies for collecting current outstanding court costs and how increased collections alone could help county budgets as well as the Regional Jail Authority and other state agencies and programs that receive a portion of these court cost collections. We also explained CCAWV's support for legislation that would require sharing of jail costs among all arresting entities. We feel by requiring the arresting officer's entity to pay the first day's per diem, everyone has "skin-in-the-game" and that will lead to better administrative decisions on all sides of the issue. Further, we encouraged Commissioners to work with their County Prosecutors to routinely request that the Judge require the convicted person to pay some or all of their incarceration costs. This is a provision already in statue, but is perhaps underused.

We had a great turnout at all of the meetings and all the discussions were very good. These meetings are a great opportunity for Commissioners and Legislators to discuss local county issues in an informal setting. We would like to thank everyone who participated and made these meetings such a success! We'd like to publicly thank all our host counties that provided meeting space and some great refreshments. And now...on to the Legislative Session