After 2023 failure, Spokane County jurisdictions working on a more collaborative jail tax proposal for 2026

One-time opponents are coming together to try to draft a unity plan for a major investment in Spokane County’s criminal justice and behavioral health systems after a similar attempt flamed out in 2023.

Two years ago, Spokane County voters overwhelmingly voted down a jail tax measure that would have generated an estimated $1.7 billion over 30 years to build two new jails and make other, sometimes unspecified, investments in the criminal justice system and treatment services.

Measure 1, which received only 37.1% of the vote and failed across nearly every precinct in the county, in some cases failed to win the support of conservatives skeptical of a massive tax ask with relatively sparse plans. But it was also nearly universally opposed at the time by liberal politicians and a well-funded campaign by community health and criminal justice reform organizations.

Now, with the blessing of many of the groups that either supported or opposed Measure 1, politicians from Spokane County and the cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley that had once been on either side of the issue are forming a task force to draft a new proposal for 2026. The collaboration would hopefully not be limited to a tax proposal, but also other ways to more efficiently partner on many of the biggest public health and safety issues in the county.

“I think, this process, we’re doing this right,” Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said in a brief Friday interview. “We want to talk about the need for renovated (jail) facilities, but I think mostly about what is the programming … so that people with mental health and substance abuse issues get treated, rather than get warehoused in the jail.”

Both county commissioners and the Spokane Valley City Council dug into the initial details of the task force Tuesday.

A task force made up of representatives from all three jurisdictions, as well as business, nonprofit and treatment service organizations, would make recommendations to the Spokane County Commission with a “thoughtful action plan” that would be finalized by next spring, Commissioner Chris Jordan said. The commissioners would hold final decision-making power as the governmental body responsible for the regional court system and putting the public safety tax measure on the ballot.

In a presentation to the commission alongside Chair Mary Kuney and Sheriff John Nowels, Jordan said the task force’s recommendations will encompass strategies and initiatives for behavioral health and addiction intervention, improving the criminal justice system and getting the most out of the various funds between the entities. The initial proposal for the task force’s structure also includes a specific work group devoted to exploring how county detention and regional treatment centers can be improved.

“We’ve all recognized the major challenges with the state of our facilities, both detention and need for treatment facilities, and I think it’s a recognition that we need to work together as a region wherever we can, for a safer and healthier community,” Jordan said. “And the public really needs to see that happening.”

Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels said he believes the regional collaboration will ensure voters are clear on the details of the new tax proposal, avoiding the confusion and lack of details that appeared to bog down Measure 1 in 2023.

“There’s going to be a lot of people putting information out very early to make sure that we educate as many members of the public as possible about the challenges we face, about the current state of the criminal justice system and the health care system, … and really the challenges we face as elected officials to provide the services as the public expects,” Nowels said.

For inspiration, the group is turning to Whatcom County, which executed a similar collaborative effort that proved successful after multiple failed jail tax measures.

Nowels added that he’s “not a political expert,” but he believes Whatcom County was successful largely due to the ability of task force members and associated elected bodies to set aside differences for the benefit of the broader community. He said the value of Spokane and Spokane Valley officials’ willingness to join in the effort can not be understated.

“Let’s look at what our mission statement is here in Spokane County and let’s make sure this task force is focused on making Spokane a safe place to live, work and do business and go to school,” Nowels said. “I think we can get there with this task force.”

Spokane Valley Mayor Pam Haley said she appreciates the task force will lean on subject matter experts, and that those experts will discuss more immediate strategies to combat the opioid epidemic and improve the criminal justice system as well as long term goals.

Avista Utilities has agreed to pay for a facilitator for the group to keep them on task, Haley said, a move she believes will help ensure actionable items wind up in front of the commissioners next spring.

“You know how groups get bogged down in all the little stuff, and go off in their own weeds,” Haley said. “So hopefully that will let them kind of center in on the things that are important and actually have an action plan.”

A diverse group of organizations wrote a letter of support for the task force, ranging from business groups like the Spokane Business Association to nonprofits that had actively opposed the 2023 measure, such as the Empire Health Foundation.

Empire Health Foundation President Zeke Smith acknowledged that forming a task force would be the first step in the difficult work of crafting a compromise all parties could support next year.

“Obviously it’s not about the solutions yet, and there are a lot of places where it could still fall apart, whether business folks that don’t like a jail downtown, conservatives that don’t like taxes, or criminal justice reform advocates that don’t like a focus on incarceration,” Smith said.

“But part of what we recognize is there’s quite a bit more opportunity for agreement if we could create a space that isn’t as charged by partisanship,” he added.