FAYETTEVILLE -- The Washington County Quorum Court voted 11 to 4 to spend federal covid relief money on an expansion of the county jail, despite opponents' warnings the move is legally dangerous.
"We are setting ourselves up for lawsuits and a federal investigation," Justice of the Peace Evelyn Rios Stafford said before the vote.
She spoke after fellow member Eva Madison told the court spending money earmarked for covid-related costs on a jail expansion by saying the expanded facility would be safer in case of covid cases stretched logic too far. The expansion will take two years to complete, further stretching the plausibility of saying the money is being used to address covid, she said.
The county must address chronic overcrowding at the jail, supporters of the $18.8 million in spending said. Overcrowding has plagued the Washington County Detention Center for eight years, Justice of the Peace Butch Pond said.
Voters rejected a sales tax increase on the Nov. 8 ballot to pay for the expansion through a temporary sales tax increase.
"I'm the one taking the phone calls when people's trucks and tractors are stolen," Pond said.
The current estimated cost of the project is $19.8 million, according to information from the Sheriff's Office. That includes the $1 million already spent on design work. The measures by the Quorum Court moved federal covid money from two different county accounts, $10 million from one and $8.8 million from another.
Justice of the Peace Bill Ussery agreed the county needed to do something to expand the jail, saying the number of prisoners processed through the jail increased by 1,000 this year compared to last.
The jail has 710 beds but also operates under regulations requiring the separation of different categories of prisoners, limiting capacity at any one time to about 570.
Delays of weeks and months before prisoners can get a court hearing while being unable to make bail largely accounts for the overcrowding, said Jon Comstock of Rogers, a prisoner rights advocate and former circuit judge. Such bottlenecks are what the court needs to spend money on, along with other reforms, Comstock said.
Comstock was one of a dozen members of the public who spoke on the jail expansion while the Quorum Court took public comments at its regular meeting Thursday night. None of the public commentators supported the expansion. Thursday's meeting was attended by a capacity crowd in the Quorum Court's meeting room at the county courthouse in Fayetteville.
Voters rejected the jail expansion in November, and now the court is going ahead anyway, opponents of the measure argued.
Stafford said the court decided to put the measure on November's ballot largely because members did not believe spending covid relief money on the jail would pass legal muster.
"The people overwhelmingly vote no," said Justice of the Peace Suki Highers. As for the argument, made in a previous meeting, that people voted against a tax and not a jail, "my inbox and yours say otherwise. I didn't get a single email or phone call supporting this," she said of the measure to expand the jail.
The county authorized design work on the $20 million covid-related project beginning in 2021 but then decided to pursue a larger plan to add jail space and space to the juvenile justice system. Those projects would have been paid for by a temporary 0.25% sales tax increase.
Nearly 59% of voters rejected the jail plan, while 54% said no to the juvenile justice system proposal at the Nov. 8 general election, according to certified election results.
"Our taxes are going to be raised to repay the federal government and to staff this," Highers said of the decision to spend the federal money on the expansion.
Madison predicted building the expansion without an ongoing source of taxpayer money to add staff for operations will result in charging cities higher fees to house prisoners arrested in cities, to cover the county's jail costs.
Doug Thompson can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWADoug.