Sheriff wants $1.7 million to hire more staff, but commissioners say they’ve already paid

The Portage County Sheriff’s Office is seeking another $1.7 million from taxpayers, mostly to hire 13 new corrections officers to staff the massive expansion at the county jail, which cost $21 million and has never been full since construction finished in December.

Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, who has already laid out a nearly $3 million spending plan over the next three years, views the empty cells as a missed opportunity to house federal inmates in a high-security cell block. He says the federal contracts would generate revenue for the county: about $100 per inmate per day, totalling $1.4 million a year if all 36 beds of Cell Block A were filled every day of the year.