Comanche County Commissioners looking for new jail administrator

The Comanche County Detention Center is getting a new administrator.

Comanche County Board of Commissioners accepted a notice of retirement from long-time Jail Administrator Bill Hobbs on Tuesday. The action came after commissioners spent more than 1½ hours in executive session as the Comanche County Facilities Authority discussing “the employment, hiring, promotion, demotion, disciplining or resignation of any individual salaried public officer or employee and more specifically Bill Hobbs, Jail Administrator.”

When commissioners returned from executive session, their action specified they would start the process to identify a new jail administrator. The goal is to craft the details of the job this week so commissioners can begin advertising the position this week, said Board Chairman Josh Powers. After the meeting, Powers said the ideal situation would be to have a candidate selected before Hobbs’ retirement becomes effective March 1, which is why commissioners want the advertising to begin this week.

“That’s the goal,” Powers said.

Hobbs announced his plans to retire Jan. 5 in a letter submitted to the facilities authority, after more than 20 years at the Comanche County Detention Center. He has been jail administrator since August 2012, and served as a lieutenant, sergeant and detention officer before his promotion to the top job.

Hobbs retirement comes on the heels of changes made at the detention center to help lessen the number of inmates being held in the facility, to get those numbers at or under the 283 mandated by state health officials. It’s action that Powers has defined as a temporary solution while the county finds a permanent way to balance population with state mandates on how many inmates may be there at one time.

Work has included crafting agreements with detention centers/jails in other counties to hold some of Comanche County’s inmate population, agreements Hobbs and his staff helped craft with others. While Comanche County has had an agreement with Tillman County for years, recent contracts also have been approved with entities in Grady, Okmulgee and Pottawatomie counties, and discussions are under way with Greer County.

Some of those sites already are holding prisoners. The Comanche County Detention Center’s inmate count Monday was 360, but 89 were being held in other counties: 68 in Tillman County, 12 in Okmulgee County and 9 in Grady County. That let 271 inmates in the Comanche County facility on Monday, compared to 263 in the facility on Jan. 12, Hobbs said.

Powers has said Tillman County will remain the preferred site because of its proximity, but that facility doesn’t alway have enough beds to cover all of Comanche County’s needs. Hobbs said in December the actual number of prisoners that Grady and Okmulgee counties can take will depend on how many beds they have available when Comanche County needs them.

Powers has said the counties that are farther way provide a flexibility through standby beds, but there also is a higher cost of using those locations because of transportation costs.