The Governor’s office has announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Department of Corrections and the Board of Probation and Parole that will combine “…the agencies’ similar, shared and overlapping resources and functions”. We wrote in February that as part of the FY 2017-18 budget the Governor proposed to combine the Department and the Board into a new Department of Criminal Justice, a Department that would have grown by 838 positions to 17,027 employees via transfers and reductions.
Based on the MOU, the entities “…will remain separate from each other; however, the community supervision of parolees and all other reentry services will be combined under a new, centralized chain of command that everyone in those areas will report to and follow.” Some office functions, such as communications and business administration, will be combined and will follow the consolidation of other functions previously completed.
The other major departmental consolidation that was proposed earlier this year was a new Department of Health and Human Services, a proposal that seemingly ended when it was reported that the Governor had made appointments to the Departments slated to be involved in the consolidation earlier this month.
