Sedgwick County commissioners vow to fight state cuts to probation office

“Scary.” “Doesn’t smell right.” “Makes zero sense on any planet.”

That’s how Sedgwick County officials are describing a move to cut state grant funding for the largest county adult-probation-services agency in Kansas by nearly 40% — from $5.2 million to $3.2 million over the next three years.

Meanwhile, counties with fewer offenders under supervision — such as Johnson, Leavenworth, Shawnee, Butler and Sumner — are set to receive increases under a new funding formula approved by Kansas Department of Corrections Secretary Jeff Zmunda. The new formula was based on recommendations by an advisory committee from across the state that lacked Sedgwick County representation.

Jurisdictions that had representation on the committee are all set to receive increases in funding, according to a spreadsheet provided by Sedgwick County.

The five Wichita-area Republicans on the Sedgwick County Commission said Tuesday that they are gearing up for a public fight with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s office, her secretary of corrections and anyone else who might be responsible for the cut. They plan to appeal to the Republican-dominated state Legislature to wrest control over how the corrections dollars are spent away from the executive branch.

The commission also wants a neutral third party — a university research group or something similar — to develop a funding formula that eliminates bias.

“This is not right,” Commission Chairman Ryan Baty said. “This is simply not right. . . . This doesn’t smell right. This doesn’t look good to know that counties that have marginal challenges (compared with what) we do in offenders and crime are seeing increases, yet we’re seeing not just a haircut — we’re seeing a decimation of the programs that we’re offering here in Sedgwick County. And this is just by any standard not appropriate, and it’s illogical.”

“So we’re going to publicly fight this and publicly fight whoever tries to get in the way of doing what’s best in this community.”

In response to questions from The Eagle, the state’s corrections department rejected the notion that the committee was self-serving and says the changes were needed “to provide equitable funding to all 31 judicial districts across the state.”

“The exact funding allocation is based on data and not on who is a member of the committee,” David Thompson, spokesperson for KDOC, said in a written statement. “There are some districts receiving increases that have no representation on the committee.”

Thompson said KDOC recently tweaked the formula at Sedgwick County’s request, including the addition of Kansas Bureau of Investigation crime statistics that granted more weight to Sedgwick because of its high violent crime rate, which was twice the statewide average and more than four times higher than Johnson County’s in 2024.

“That data still does not support their level of funding compared to the rest of the state,” he added.

Thompson pointed to a state statute that gives authority to Zmunda to allocate state grants for community corrections based on success rates, with more funding going to counties with “significantly lower” success rates than the statewide average and counties that target a higher than 75% or 3% annual improvements in supervision success rates.

Sedgwick County’s success rates dropped from 58% in 2022 to 52% in 2023 before improving to 55% last year and 56% in 2025.

It’s unclear how that compares to other community corrections programs across the state, as they are all reported individually to local government units, such as the Sedgwick County Commission. County officials said they’re working to pull together that data for commissioners.

“Success” is defined by the number of people who don’t go to prison, including those who successfully complete probation, cases where a judge terminates probation and those who die while in the program. Five probationers died in August alone, said Lori Gibbs, Sedgwick County’s deputy director of adult programs.

It’s more expensive for the state if those under community corrections supervision are instead sent to prison. Supervised release on probation allows offenders to remain part of the community while probation officers make sure they stay on track and don’t commit new crimes, hang around the wrong people or abuse drugs or alcohol. Sedgwick County also has other specialty rehabilitation programming based on the type of offense.

But the county won’t look the other way in order to get grant funding if people violate the terms of their probation, Sedgwick County Corrections Director Steve Stonehouse said.

“The majority of these folks are presumptive prison folks, and the court knows that we don’t play to the test,” Stonehouse said. “So if somebody needs to be revoked, we never say, ‘No, don’t do that, our numbers are not good’ — obviously, because our numbers are not good. But if they need to go to prison, they need to go to prison, and that’s what we recommend.

“We don’t ever judge it on a funding formula,” he added.

The governor’s office declined to comment through a spokesperson.

Boosts for other counties

The cuts would allow KDOC to boost funding to Johnson, Leavenworth, Shawnee and several other counties with hundreds fewer people on probation than Sedgwick County, which supervises about 1,100 adult offenders at any given time. About one in four of those offenders is not a Sedgwick County resident, county officials said.

Based on numbers provided by Sedgwick County, the funding change would pay counties like Atchison and Sumner more than $10,000 per person under community corrections supervision while Sedgwick County would get around $3,300. Johnson County would get around $3,700 per person.

The nearly $30 million pool of state grant funds for community corrections is spread among 31 judicial districts. Sedgwick County currently receives about one-sixth of those funds.

Others that receive more than $1 million are Johnson, Wyandotte, Shawnee, Saline-Ottawa, Reno, Labette-Crawford and Northwest Kansas, which includes roughly the northwest quarter of the state.

“This is the same pot of money,” Baty said. “Just on some planet, they’ve decided that the county with the biggest need, serving the most people, with the most violent crime proportionally in the state somehow doesn’t just get a cut — they get a 40% cut. This makes zero sense on any planet.”

Johnson County, the state’s largest county by population but not by incarceration, is set to receive a $771,190.16 increase to their $2.1 million grant, by far the largest increase in the state.

Commissioner Jim Howell, a former state legislator whose wife is in the House of Representatives, said he thinks the Legislature would quickly move to fix the funding early in next year’s session.

“If you’re going to change the formula, it should be done very thoughtfully,” Howell said. “And when you create losers in the process, it just feels almost immoral for that to be the way that we would advocate to go forward. So I think this advisory committee did not realize they have other options. They should have advocated for appropriation to fix this, rather than a shifting of dollars from one to the other.”

More cuts coming?

Cuts to community corrections grant programs are expected to be followed by additional cuts to state grants for juvenile corrections, Stonehouse told county commissioners.

Commissioners are hoping to restore state funding to both programs, starting with the adult side.

“In my view, for this community, this is the number one challenge that we’re facing,” Baty said. “These programs reduce incarceration, these programs support rehabilitation, these programs improve public safety, and this is what we hear in the community today is that this is what they want.”

Stonehouse told commissioners the deep cuts would force Sedgwick County to eliminate staff positions and gut programs aimed at changing criminal behavior and keeping people from reoffending.

“The impact on the community is going to be a reduction in programming,” Stonehouse said.

The county would have to eliminate its batterer intervention program aimed at reducing domestic violence. The cuts would also reduce funding that helps pay for medication and housing. Then there are staffing cuts.

“All my staff has heard this since December,” Stonehouse said. “Probably seven or eight staff right now for this first cut. . . . So what that’s going to look like is higher case loads.”

“When you have less people, you have to do less work,” Stonehouse said. “I can’t kill people.”

Commissioners could offset the cuts with county funding, but that would run counter to the commission’s property-tax-cutting agenda. And commissioners say Sedgwick County already spends more on its community corrections programming than other counties.

Howell said it’s another example of the state shifting the cost of state government services, such as corrections, onto local property taxpayers.

“I don’t mind us being invested in this,” Howell, a fiscal conservative, said. “I think we should be. I just think that what’s noticeable here is the shift from state responsibility to local government and they have just backed off and their hands are off of it completely. At the end of the day, we have a growing problem, and the state has a responsibility.”