Oklahoma County Seeks Urgent Jail Solution
The $400 million price tag attached last month to a proposed new or renovated Oklahoma County jail left county officials stunned and bewildered. It also raised the question of whether the county missed its chance to fix the jail before the U.S. Justice Department steps in to correct problems that led to a scathing report last year on civil rights abuses at the lockup. Report by NewsOK.
Sheriff John Whetsel put a doomed tax initiative before voters in 2003, a proposal he now admits was flawed and lacked accountability. Current and former county officials said the timing might have been right, but the politics of the day killed any chance for a successful fix. Now that county officials are united behind the cause, the price tag appears out of reach.
If the county can’t come up with a solution that is palatable to voters, the federal government could mandate changes that would go on the county’s property tax rolls without giving voters or local officials any say. “I think certainly the DOJ (Justice Department) is saying that there has been a lack of political will to see this resolved,” District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan said. “They are saying collectively it’s not been there and they are tired of messing with us and will take it into their own hands, which is the grave risk we run,” he said.
Whetsel’s 2003 proposal would have established a permanent two-fifths-cent countywide sales tax which he estimated would bring in $30 million a year. Whetsel would have used the money to hire more employees for the jail and deputies for his enforcement activities. The proposal did not include money for jail renovations or any oversight for how the money could be used. Voters shot it down by a 4-to-1 margin. County officials at the time were sharply divided …
Voter distrust after mistakes in the jail’s 1991 construction made it almost impossible to come up with a successful proposal. “I think there is truth to the fact that the citizens put a lot of faith in county officials many years ago and county officials let them down,” Whetsel said. “As honest as I believe the county officials are now as a group, people have a long memory.”
County officials are now unanimous in their efforts to fix the jail. A process that began shortly after the Justice Department’s report a year ago led the county to hire a group of engineers to develop a plan for fixing the jail’s problems. But the $400 million price tag the group came up with is unacceptable, Maughan said. All three commissioners agreed voters will never approve such a plan and have asked the engineers to significantly trim their proposal to make it more reasonable. “We have to do something,” Maughan said. “We have to make some last-ditch effort before we just concede and allow DOJ to come in and take over.”
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