Northwest Missouri’s only dedicated water patrol officer steered clear of a layoff in Gov. Jay Nixon’s recent round of state budget withholdings.

Still, area prisons took a hit in funding reductions for personnel.

Mr. Nixon this summer called on all state departments to submit proposals for possible cuts in light of less-than-anticipated revenue.

The officer in St. Joseph was one of seven possible Missouri State Water Patrol layoffs the Department of Public Safety proposed to save $467,508 from the state budget.

A Water Patrol presence in St. Joseph and Northwest Missouri goes back as far as 1965. The current officer has been stationed here patrolling the Missouri River since June 2008, but also patrols Smithville Lake

Mr. Nixon last week announced he would withhold roughly $60 million from the state budget, but the list didn’t include any of the seven Water Patrol layoffs.

“Nothing is changing up there,” public safety spokesman Mike O’Connell said of the patrol’s presence in St. Joseph. “We’re keeping everybody in place.”

Instead, the Water Patrol plans on reducing deployment of specialty teams to only high priority incidents. Also, the patrol will lower boat safety manual purchases, freeze equipment purchases until 2011 and reduce training and conferences for employees.

“The Water Patrol understands the great strain the economy has put on the budget and is pleased that we are able to reduce costs and improve efficiencies without reducing the number of Water Patrol officers,” patrol spokesman Sgt. Jerry Callahan said in a statement.

The Chillicothe Correctional Center will have to hold off the opening of a new reception and diagnostic center because of the withholdings, however.

As a way to save nearly $1 million, the Missouri Department of Corrections plans to leave one housing unit open at the Chillicothe center for one year to help delay the opening of the new reception center for three months “with hopes that there will not be a spike in the female incarcerated population,” according to a state memo.

The state only has two other reception and diagnostic centers, where inmates go before they’re assigned to prisons to serve out the majority of their sentences. They are in St. Joseph and Vandalia. The state had identified the Chillicothe Correctional Center as a location for a third site to help alleviate overcrowding.

“Right now we are just going to hold off on that for a few more months ... since we don’t have a need for those beds,” said Jacqueline Lapine, chief public information officer for the department of corrections.

Also, the department plans to slow down its hiring of administrative employees and office personnel. There is no hiring freeze, Ms. Lapine said, but as vacancies come open, they will be filled much slower than in the past.

That results in a savings, or a cut, of roughly $105,000 in St. Joseph at the Western Reception and Diagnostic Correctional Center, $37,100 at the Maryville Treatment Center and $77,000 in Cameron at the Crossroads Correctional Center.

Also, the state is reducing its aid to regional planning commissions by 40 percent, with a core reduction of $100,000. That will drop the state’s contribution to the Mo-Kan Regional Council in St. Joseph from $13,500 to roughly $8,000, said Tom Bliss, executive director. That’s not a big splash in a total agency budget of $831,000, but Mr. Bliss explained most of that money comes with strings that limits staff on where they can spend it.

The state funding helps Mo-Kan pay for programming or equipment that don’t fit specific requirements.

“It kind of limits our creativity,” Mr. Bliss said of the cuts.

The withholdings aren’t true budget cuts, meaning that if the state reaps more revenue than it expects, Mr. Nixon could reinstate some of the reductions later in the year.

Alyson E. Raletz can be reached

at alysonraletz@npgco.com.