The fate of Beaver County's push to privatize the county jail now rests in the hands of Marc Winters, an arbiter from Butler County.

Beaver County officials and jail guards testified before a three-member arbitration panel April 12 and last Thursday, making their cases for alternative versions of how the Beaver County Jail should be run.

With one of the three panel members selected by the county and one by the guards, however, it is essentially up to the one neutral arbiter, Mr. Winters, to say what should happen.

The county has signed a contract with a Massachusetts firm, CiviGenics Inc., to take over management of the jail. The county says it can save up to $1.6 million a year by moving the jail into the private sector.

The corrections officers union, working without a contract since Jan. 1, made a counterproposal, but it could not match the savings promised by CiviGenics. The union filed for arbitration after the county signed the CiviGenics contract.

Neither guard nor county representatives would talk in detail about the proceedings, which were closed to the public. County financial administrator Rob Cyphert and jail Warden Bill Schouppe were the county's primary witnesses; three corrections officers testified for the union.

According to solicitor Myron Sainovich, who is the county's representative to the panel, Mr. Winters has a fair amount of power to decide for himself on a new union contract. He's not locked into an either-or choice adopting the county's proposal or the union's.

"He can be like Solomon and split the baby," Mr. Sainovich said. "He can do what he deems to be fair, just and reasonable for both sides," though his ruling has to be based on the proposals and the evidence presented.

"You can't just go out there and make a decision based on your whim," Mr. Sainovich said.

Mr. Winters declined to comment on the matter yesterday.

The arbitration process could mark the end of protracted talks, if both sides are happy with Mr. Winters' decision. They also could use it as a basis for continued negotiations. Or one side or the other or both could reject it, sending the matter into a courtroom, a result deemed likely late last year, when the county announced it was going with the CiviGenics deal.

There is no time frame for Mr. Winters to announce his decision, but Mr. Sainovich said, "I don't think the arbitrator wants this to linger."

The county commissioners have been talking about privatizing the jail for almost a year and a half as they've gone through a couple of rounds of spending cuts. Their argument all along has been primarily one of money, though they maintain that private jails have to meet the same hiring and safety standards that public ones do.

CiviGenics, which runs the jail in neighboring Columbiana County, Ohio, and runs the halfway house Penn Pavilion in New Brighton, was the only company to make a proposal, though several other companies studied the county's situation last year.

Union spokesmen have questioned the safety record of private prisons, which appear from many studies to have had a disproportionate number of problems. They also have questioned whether CiviGenics can save as much as it says it can, and if it can keep up the savings over the long term.

The commissioners have argued that the safety problems have been largely at state prisons, which are generally far larger than the county jail and house longer-term, more hardened criminals. And they cite the positive experiences of their Columbiana counterparts.