Editorial: County-state jail standoff over costs helps no one

Spokane County residents don’t have a dog in the extended scrap between Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich and the state Department of Corrections.

They have two.

The dispute – over the cost of boarding state inmates in the county jail – will end satisfactorily only if the rates paid and the expenses incurred are simultaneously kept to a minimum. Failure on either score comes out of the state/local taxpayers’ pocketbooks.

So far, the state Department of Corrections has addressed one side of the equation by unilaterally refusing to pay a sharp increase the county attempted to impose from $68 a day per inmate to $125. In a confrontation that has gone on since last June, the shortage has grown to $489,000, and the county is threatening to evict its state guests next month.

On any given day, 15 to 18 state prisoners reside in the county facility. They need to be guarded. They need to be fed. Sometimes they need to be transported, and they have occasional health care needs. Meanwhile, there are utilities and laundry and assorted other overhead expenses to meet.

Those costs add up. They add up, Knezovich figures, to about $125 a day, and he just wants to recover the county’s costs. Otherwise, the state’s savings come at the county’s expense.

State Prisons Director Bernie Warner told Spokesman-Review reporter John Craig that most other local governments that house his felons charge between $60 and $80. Perhaps, but that’s immaterial from Spokane County’s point of view, given Knezovich’s calculations about costs.

Last year, at current rates, Spokane County received $1.2 million from the state for housing state prisoners, but if the state takes its business elsewhere, Knezovich says he could make up for it by accepting more federal prisoners. He gets only $89 a day for federal tenants, but the U.S. government picks up their transportation and medical expenses.

Although the ultimate decision is up to the Board of Spokane County Commissioners, for his part, Knezovich says he’d be comfortable reaching the same deal with the state that exists with the feds – $89 a day plus transportation and medical expenses.

It’s admirable of state and local officials to show such determination to protect their respective constituents’ interests. But they are largely the same constituents. This standoff has lasted nearly a year, which is unreasonably long when a plausible solution is right under their cold, wet noses.