Prison closure brings financial crisis to NC’s tiniest county

Last year’s decision to close the Tyrrell Prison Work Farm put tiny Tyrrell County and the town of Columbia at high risk of defaulting on a significant amount of debt.

In 2011, Tyrrell County and the town of Columbia took out $5.4 million in bonds to pay for water and sewer infrastructure and systems to serve the prison. The work farm is the county’s largest water customer, consuming 30% of its output.

Tyrrell County is expected to pay off the bonds yearly through 2052 but had no warning that the work farm would close. Located inland from the Outer Banks, Tyrrell has the smallest population of the state’s 100 counties.

“Operations at the Tyrrell Prison Work Farm were suspended temporarily last October due to staffing shortages in the region,” said John Bull, spokesperson for the N.C. Division of Prisons. “The staff were reassigned to other prisons in the region that suffered from high correctional officer vacancy rates.”

“The Division of Prisons currently is working on cleaning up the work farm to potentially resume operations to some degree at the facility,” Bull said in an email.

The prison had a 10% shortage in correctional officers.

All officers lived within 55 miles of at least one other prison, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety. The department anticipated each of the corrections officers would receive a pay increase to move to a different facility.

But David Clegg, the Tyrrell County manager, said there was no warning about the closure. County officials did not learn about it until the next day, he said.

“We went through an existential crisis when they closed it without telling us,” Clegg said. “That began a lot of freaking out in the administration and the General Assembly and also the state treasurer got into it.”

Lawmakers considered this session giving the county and the town of Columbia $5.4 million to help pay off the bonds. But that legislation never got a committee hearing in the Senate. Lawmakers don’t intend to come back to Raleigh until September.

Inmates built the Tyrrell Prison Work Farm in 1998 on 200 acres near Columbia. The work farm was meant to be a minimum security prison, housing 620 men with a program emphasizing agricultural jobs.

Inmates grew crops including broccoli, cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers. Tyrrell County officials never anticipated the prison might close when they took out bonds.

Utility rate increase?

The situation became even more dire because of Gov. Roy Cooper’s COVID-19 executive order that prevents utility companies from penalizing a customer for missed payments. As of May, the Columbia Board of Aldermen were considering raising water and sewer rates more than 20%, according to the Washington Daily News.

Clegg said that raising property taxes to pay back a utility fund would probably face a legal issue. And even if it did, out of the 3,900 people living in the county, only 1,300 use the county’s water system.

“I don’t think you can jack up the taxes on 1,300 people to pay for this,” Clegg said.

By the time the Office of State Budget and Management stepped in, “We had already told Farmers (Insurance) that we were going to default,” Clegg said.

The budget office transferred to Tyrrell County $209,000 and to Columbia $113,603 to help pay the bonds for a year.

But Clegg said if lawmakers don’t come up with a solution or if the prison doesn’t reopen in its full capacity, the county is looking at being in the same situation next spring.

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