Jail could be forced to slash its staff

Needs to find another $5.4M by end of June

Richard Mize

The Oklahoman USA TODAY NETWORK

The door to jail reform will slam shut and improving conditions will reverse with nearly half the staff laid off unless $5.4 million is found for the Oklahoma County jail by June 30, officials said.

The county doesn’t have it, and officials don’t know where to get it for the facility. Commissioner Brian Maughan said chaos will strike the already stressed-out operation unless a solution is found in “the next 100 days.”

Maughan saved that bombshell for the end of the quarterly meeting of the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Advisory Council on Thursday, Feb. 19. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamberbacked task force includes county, jail, and law enforcement officials and criminal justice advocates.

The council, known as CJAC, had just heard a review of incremental successes, next steps and targets in its long-term goal of lowering the jail

population.

With District Attorney Vicki Behenna rolling off as chair, and Chief Public Defender Brigitte Biffle ending her term as co-chair, Tony Tyler, founder of Tyler Media, took over as chair and Sandy Coats, former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma, came on as co-chair.

CJAC works to keep low-level offenders from being incarcerated, find ways to help people from being detained because they can’t afford to post bail, and to add alternatives to jail for those with mental health issues or drug addiction, among other reform aims.

In addition, jail administrator Tim Kimrey has worked with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to reduce the time convicts headed for state prison remain at the jail and reduce the number of DOC detainees being held awaiting transfer.

If the jail staff has to be reduced by half to make it to the end of the fiscal year on June 30, the advances will stall and the situation will go from bad, but improving, to worse than ever, said Maughan, chairman of the Board of County Commissioners.

Kimrey and others have complained that the county has never adequately funded the jail, governed by the Criminal Justice Authority, a public trust appointed by county commissioners. That hasn’t kept Kimrey from growing the payroll by adding employees, including medical staff, to improve operations.

Kimrey, other jail and county staff and jail trust Chairman Jim Holman have also worked to cut other costs, but not nearly enough. Holman told the County Budget Board at its meeting, also Feb. 19, that they’d been able to trim less than 10% from the fiscal year-end deficit of $5.8 million projected the past eight months.

“If we just make it simple and look at the expenses and what we need to cut between now and the end of the fiscal year, we’re talking about almost 50% of our payroll obligation as that’s our largest expense,” Holman told the Budget Board, which controls the county’s purse strings.

The purse is nearly empty, though, said Maughan, who represents District 2.

The county has just $1.6 million in general fund reserves for ongoing operations. Another $8.2 million in one-time funding probably cannot be used for the current jail’s operations because of federal strings attached. It was part of the county’s allocation from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Besides the ARPA restriction, the $8.2 million should not go to the jail, Maughan said.

“In the event we do that, we’re just shoving it (the rolling deficit) past June 30,” he told CJAC. “Nothing about the funding situation changes.

“So while I appreciate the work of reducing the number of DOC (detainees) and whatever, and ... getting people out in a timely fashion, I’m sympathetic to it, but if we lay off half of the employees, those numbers and targets will be simply unreachable. They really will.”

CJAC member Sue Ann Arnall, attorney, philanthropist and president of the Arnall Family Foundation, which works for criminal justice reform, said the jail’s woes are “shared by the whole county, not just the jail.” She suggested that other CJAC organizations step up and help as the jail proceeds with financial reform.

With District 1 Commissioner Jason Lowe’s proposal for a county public safety sales tax election for revenue to finish the new jail at 1901 E Grand and to fund the old jail at 201 N Shartel downtown failing, getting the jail on the right track could fall to outside contributions, Maughan said.

Maughan and District 3 Commissioner Myles Davidson did not support Lowe’s plan because it didn’t have the backing of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, meaning, they said, that an election would fail.

With no known options, the near future for the jail looks bleak, Maughan told CJAC.

“I thought everybody here has some role that you could play ... to help soften the blow,” he said. “I would really, greatly appreciate it.

“And even if we should manage to find a legal pathway to use the one-time (ARPA) funds and get past June 30, I think we’ll be right there at the first of the new fiscal year without the benefit of any other additional one-time dollars, assuming they’re permanently exhausted.”

Staff writer Richard Mize covers Oklahoma County government and the city of Edmond. He previously covered housing, commercial real estate and related topics for the newspaper and Oklahoman. com, starting in 1999. Contact him at rmize@oklahoman.com.