By LOYD COOK/Daily Sun Staff
Navarro County commissioners will likely approve a contract with a company that will audit the county jail’s revenue stream from its public phones.

The company, Praeses Corporation, will make sure the call volume on the county’s pay phones are being properly counted for revenue and that the county is receiving the actual commissions it should be.

Richard Wright, Praeses’ representative at Monday’s meeting of the Navarro County Commissioners Court, said his 17-year-old company began making its money reselling long distance services before transitioning in recent years to offering public phone management services to different entities.

He said the idea of providing the same service to smaller entities, like counties, came to him as the Shreveport-based company was having a meeting about a large private prison company they were working for.

«In 18 months, on behalf of the private prison (company), we returned about $1.5 million in additional revenue,» Wright said. «I thought, why couldn’t we do this for our parishes (in Louisiana) and counties in the surrounding states?»

Since June, Praeses has reached agreements with five Texas counties and are slated to make their pitch to several others in coming months, Wright said.

Praeses gets 15 percent of all revenues received from the inmate telephones which are, in the Navarro County jail, collect call-only telephones. Wright said his company typically is able to generate 25 to 40 percent more revenues for an entity -- in about 90 percent of the audits Praeses performs -- just in billing error situations.

That leaves about 10 to 25 percent additional revenue for the county, he said.

Wright said the company the county presently uses for their public telephones, Everman, is the best that Praeses deals with. He said Praeses deals with about 25 to 30 such companies providing public telephones.

«I have to stress that these are intentional errors,» Wright said. «Everman is very good with their policy, that if a mistake is found they want to correct it and get the money back to a county because their feeling is that it belonged to (the county) in the first place.»

The billing errors found often unearth revenue the public phone company isn’t receiving either, he said. Those companies are reselling long distance as well -- in the case of Everman and the county, it’s likely AT&T long distance, Wright said -- and the billing errors can effect them as well.

Part of the audit includes researching past billings to see if the county has lost revenue there as well. If any is recovered in that situation, Praeses gets a 33 percent commission.

Presently, Praeses Corporation provides the same auditing services for Exxon, Circle K, Piggly Wiggly and Waffle House, among others.

Should the company not find enough savings to cover its commission, it will refund up to 100 percent of that commission amount back to the county. Wright said his company would move quickly to do so in that scenario, well before the end of the one-year contract.

«In about 10 percent of our contracts, that’s what happens,,» Wright said. «Worst case scenario … is that you would have the same revenue» as before.

Commissioners voted to accept the presentation. County Judge Alan Bristol said the item would be put on the commissioners’ Dec. 22 meeting agenda for formal approval, dependent on an examination of the contract.