Officials Considering Options To Jail Overcrowding

Kootenai County officials now are considering moving inmates out of state to handle jail overcrowding.

The news comes just a month after the county announced a budget emergency from trying to keep up with the $30,000 monthly bills to ship inmates to Bonner, Shoshone and Latah counties.

Now Latah doesn’t have the room, prompting Kootenai officials to look outside Idaho, sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said.

“There is just no room at the inn,” Wolfinger said. “We are exploring options in Montana.”

The county is having discussion with officials in Thompson Falls, Mont. “But there are some extradition issues we have to work out,” he said.

The possible out-of-state solution is one of many ideas that county leaders must face for another two years as they push forward with plans to expand the Kootenai County jail.

County Commissioner Ron Rankin said the county is close to signing a contract with the construction supervisor to oversee the $12 million jail expansion that will include 228 new beds and bigger kitchen, laundry, booking and medical areas.

“Everything is full-charge ahead,” Rankin said.

The current jail was built in 1986 for 95 inmates. After some modifications it now is designed to hold 127 prisoners. On Feb. 22, it housed 176 inmates.

Commissioner Dick Compton said the numbers alone show the need for the jail expansion.

“A jail is the last thing in the world you want to build, but we just can’t will it to go away,” Compton said.

How the county will pay for that expansion - which isn’t expected to be completed until sometime in 2002 - will be answered with a vote on May 23.

“The election coming up will have no effect on whether we build the jail or not,” Rankin said. “It will only decide if we fund it with a property tax or a sales tax increase.”

Rankin wants voters to approve a half-cent sales tax increase that would raise $24 million over five years. Half would build the jail, the other $12 million would go to reducing property taxes.

A similar measure was killed last May when the vote tally fell 8 percent short of the 60 percent needed to approve the sales tax increase.

If the new measure has the same result, the county will raise property taxes by $1.7 million a year for seven years to pay for the jail, Rankin said.

“This would erase all of our efforts to keep (property) taxes down,” he said.

In the meantime, the county is squeezing every penny it can from inmates to raise money to pay for sending inmates out of county - and possibly out of state.

The Idaho Legislature passed a law last year that allows counties to charge inmates for being housed in jail, Rankin said.

Kootenai County started in October charging inmates $25 a day to be housed in the jail.

Sheriff Rocky Watson also charges inmates $1.50 on every collect call out of the jail; $10 a day for inmates to work on the labor crew; and $15 a day for them to participate in work release.

Since October, those charges have raised $175,000 that has been put into the county general fund.

“It could approach $250,000 for the full budget year,” Rankin said. “What it boils down to is, we are trying to get these convicted inmates - either on work release, job service or doing sentenced time - to pay as much as possible for it.”

However, since the county did not budget that money, it can’t be used until next year.

The county still must rely on $100,000 in the justice fund and another $100,000 elsewhere in the county budget to pay for housing inmates in other counties.

“It looks like we will weather the storm,” Rankin said. “Unless, we get a capital murder where we have to pony up on more funds on prosecutors or public defenders.”

The money raised through charging inmates should cover the costs of inmates until the new jail can open, he said.

“We are doing everything that can possibly be done to take the load off the taxpayers and put it on the back of the offenders,” he said.

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