Ada County needs more jail space. But not everyone likes how an expansion will be funded
Ada County will spend more than $44 million over the next several years to expand the county jail, a move officials hope will help the county get ahead of the rapidly growing county population.
But not everyone agrees with the way the new expansion will be funded.
The Ada County commissioners voted 2-1 last week to approve the expansion, which would bring 294 new beds to the jail as well as new food storage space, an expanded booking area and a more secure entrance to the jail.
Commissioners Kendra Kenyon and Diana Lachiondo, both Democrats, voted yes. Commissioner Patrick Malloy, a Republican, voted no.
Malloy told fellow commissioners that he saw the need for the expansion but had a problem with how it will be paid for. The majority of the $44.4 million — about $38 million — will come through a type of lease-purchase financing that uses “certificates of participation.”
Those certificates would be issued by Zions Bank and bought by investors purchasing a share of the lease revenue. The county would pay them back in an annual appropriation for the lease each year. The county would lease from Zions in the meantime, a county spokesperson said Tuesday, likely for 30 years but subject to annual appropriation by the commission.
That kind of financing was approved by the Idaho Supreme Court in 2015. Malloy, however, said he felt that mode “lacks an air of transparency with the public.” Typically, facilities improvements like the jail expansion are paid for with bonds approved by voters. In Idaho, long-term debt requires approval from a two-thirds majority of voters. Using certificates of participation does not require voter approval.
“I just cannot get to the point of using this mechanism of making it only an annual appropriation to what I feel is bypassing giving the voters a direct entity on the ballot to approve or disapprove this indebtedness,” Malloy said.
Lachiondo argued that she was more concerned that Ada County had “failed the jail inspection for multiple years in a row.” She said that if commissioners several years ago had addressed the need for more space, current commissioners would have more time for discussion of financing options.
She pointed to Canyon County, which had to operate under a federal court order to try to resolve overcrowding issues by renting equipment.
“We cannot afford to put the county in that situation,” Lachiondo said. She added that Malloy’s predecessor, fellow Republican and former Commissioner Rick Visser, “was supportive” of using certificates of participation to finance projects.
She said that if conditions changed in the future and the jail population dropped, Ada County could walk away from the project, which it would still own, and potentially rent the new space out to the Idaho Department of Correction.
In a Facebook post last week, Sheriff Stephen Bartlett’s office said the population of the county has grown so fast that crowding can make the jail unsafe.
“Before the COVID-19 coronavirus hit, our inmate population was over 1,000 pretty much every day and trending up,” the Sheriff’s Office said. “We had more than a few days where we had to put cots on the floor of our dorms. We are maxed out for bed space, we need more food storage space, and our inmate-staffed kitchen and laundry are at the absolute limit for what they can manage each day.”
The main jail building can house up to 1,116 inmates. The new space, with its almost 300 additional beds, would be a building the sheriff’s office calls a pod. It would have three dorm-style areas and four traditional jail housing areas, which will have two- and four-person cells.
“We also know that the longer the wait, the more expensive construction materials become,” the post continues. “Getting this work done now will allow us to respond to relentless population growth — while saving Ada County money in the long run and preserving community safety.”
Bartlett, speaking Tuesday during a Meridian Chamber of Commerce forum, said he was “extremely proud” of the county commissioners for listening to the sheriff’s office’s needs.
“Hopefully by August of 2021, we will be breaking ground on the new addition to our jail,” he said, adding that the expansion would add enough capacity to extend the lifespan of the jail by about a decade.
The design process is expected to be completed in about seven months. Construction is expected to be done by the end of 2023.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
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