In a split decision, the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners has ordered the relocation of a probation and parole office from the county Law Enforcement Center into the adjacent Government Center courthouse once it is completed.

The 4-3 decision, made Tuesday evening, reverses a 6-0 decision the board made in February 2006 to keep the probation and parole office right where it is – just off the lobby in the building housing the county jail and sheriff’s office.

Probation and parole officers work for both the Michigan Department of Corrections and the Circuit Court. Michigan Department of Corrections field supervisor Bill Cantinella appeared before county commissioners at their executive committee meeting Tuesday morning and urged them – as he has in the past – to move the probation office out of the jail building and into the new courthouse once it opens, tentatively early next year.

“People respond differently to their probation officer in a jail than they do in a courthouse,” Cantinella told the board.

He said the whole idea of parole is to bring convicted felons “back into the mainstream” and keep them out of jail. Sending them to a jail building to check in with their probation officer gives probationers the wrong message, he said.

“We’ve already made this decision,” said District No. 7 commissioner Melinda Lautner, “and we’ve already given your people a very nice office in the Law Enforcement Center, so I see no reason to move you into the courthouse.”

Lautner said she recalled that several years ago a parolee who was required to submit to a urinalysis at the old probation office in Lake Leelanau ended up urinating on a carpet and walls, resulting in considerable expense to the county.

“We’re going to have a nice, new courthouse and we want to keep it that way,” Lautner said. “And I’m concerned about mixing convicted felons with juveniles and employees over at the courthouse.”

Lautner said she wondered if an Oct. 8 letter the county administrator received from Circuit Court judges Thomas G. Power and Philip E. Rodgers Jr., advocating for a move of the probation office to the courthouses, wasn’t “motivated by the judges wanting more security in the courthouse.”

Earlier this year, commissioners opted to include no money in next year’s budget for guards to man security screening stations planned at the new courthouse. Instead of funding full time security guard positions at the courthouse at a cost of more than $100,000 per year, commissioners opted to let the Sheriff’s Department to provide additional security at the new courthouse on an “as needed” basis.

Moving the probation office inside the courthouse “may be one more reason we may be backed into providing security at the courthouse – and the cost will be tremendous,” said county board chairman and District No. 5 commissioner Robert Hawley.

Nonetheless, Hawley voted “yes” on a motion by District No. 2 commissioner Mark Walter to move the probation office from the law enforcement center into the courthouse. The motion was supported by Bunek, with District No. 1 commissioner Jean Watkoski casting the fourth “yes” vote required for approval.

The motion also stipulated that the space to be vacated by the probation office in the law enforcement center remain vacant. Original plans for the courthouse had called for the probation office to be located there.

In their letter to commissioners, the two circuit court judges wrote:

“We believe that the office space for the Department of Corrections was properly included in the plans and ‘as built’ meets the needs of the Circuit Court probation office in a very acceptable fashion. There is room for the probation officer, secretarial staff and a toilet where drug testing can take place. The office itself is physically separated from the remaining Circuit Court offices and minimizes the potential for unnecessary contact between felons on probation and the rest of the citizenry.”

The letter was signed by judges Power and Rodgers.