(Update: Commissioner Jason Lowe’s sales tax proposal failed to receive a second from fellow members of the Oklahoma County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 21. The following article remains in its original form.)
Voters seem destined to consider a proposed 5/8-cent sales tax to fund a new Oklahoma County Jail, its operation and other public safety components now that a bipartisan pair of county commissioners has signaled support. In addition, the county’s Republican sheriff has signed onto the proposal initially filed by one of its two elected Democrats.
District 3 Commissioner Myles Davidson said Monday he is in favor of the new sales tax proposed by District 1 Commissioner Jason Lowe, which would close a $400 million construction cost gap for Oklahoma County’s new jail and attached behavioral health center in southeast OKC. The permanent tax also would provide funding for ongoing operations, as well as “diversion, behavioral health, courtroom, sheriff, emergency management (and) emergency medical” services.
“I think people are ready for it,” Davidson, a Republican, said Monday before a meeting of the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority, also known as the jail trust. “As I’ve spoken to people out on the doorsteps — even yesterday at a public meeting — people say that they are ready for it. I mean, this was a group of conservatives, and they understand that we need a jail.”
Operated by the public trust since mid-2020, the Oklahoma County Jail has featured a flat $33 million budget for more than half a decade, with chronic shortfalls exacerbating existing problems. The jail estimates a $5.8 million funding deficit for the current fiscal year, CFO Stevi Hampton told members of the county evaluation team Jan. 9.
While his proposal lacks formal support from the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, Lowe submitted language for the 5/8-cent sales tax proposition to Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna’s office Friday. On Monday, Lowe shared a reply from Behenna’s office stating the proposal “meets the terms and requirements” of state ballot language law.
“I have spoken many times about the need to allow the voters of this county to decide the future of Oklahoma County’s jail crisis and the need to build, operate and maintain a new county jail,” Lowe, a Democrat, said Friday. “In my time here, it has become very apparent to me that we are on an unsustainable path not only with the detention center, but also with other critical public safety issues within Oklahoma County.”
If a majority of Oklahoma County voters approve the sales tax April 7, the new jail would be built alongside a 60-bed behavioral health center at 1901 E. Grand Blvd. Funded by American Rescue Plan Act funds, that $45 million project is already in the early stages of construction.
The proposed 0.625 percent sales tax for the new jail would generate an estimated $120 million per year, Davidson said. If passed, Davidson said the tax would dedicate $53 million annually to service 15-year bonds for the jail’s construction. About $36 million would be allocated for jail operations, which would include staff salaries and other costs. The remaining monies would go toward the sheriff’s department ($11 million), volunteer fire departments ($5.4 million), emergency medical services ($1 million), and roads and bridges ($12.2 million). A 20-year public safety plan is also being considered by commissioners, Davidson said.
“[Voters] also understand that if we don’t do this and invest in ourselves, that somebody will make us invest, and it will come out of our property taxes,” Davidson said.
The Oklahoma County Jail has been in a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Justice since 2009. County officials have long expressed concerns the troubled facility could be taken over by the DOJ. Those costs would likely be passed on to county residents through property taxes.
“That’s the scary part, because that could be a $3 billion deal that has to be paid off in three years,” Davidson said. “We’re going to kick grandmas and people who can’t afford this out of the house. We’re already tight. I know our property taxes aren’t as high as some, but we would be allowing someone else to control our own property taxes. So I don’t agree with that. That’s why I think the sales tax is the right way to go.”
While District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan reacted cautiously Friday after learning of Lowe’s sales tax proposal, he expressed concern about whether such a campaign can be successful without “major philanthropy” supporting it. He estimated a pro-sales tax campaign would likely cost at least $1.5 million. Maughan said he had been rebuffed by civic organizations like the Greater OKC Chamber of Commerce while trying to solves the jail problem in the past.
“I don’t know who would run the campaign since the chamber has declined, and I understand they have yet to locate someone who will do it,” Maughan said. “Someone’s got to make those ads, so I don’t know who is going to do that. I’ve yet to be able to find anybody to run the campaign or serve as the committee chair or the treasurer.”
On Friday, a spokeswoman for the OKC-area chamber of commerce said the organization would likely respond to the sales tax proposal this week. On Monday, she did not respond to another request for comment.
Asked how county leaders will sell the sales tax to voters over the next 86 days, Davidson said exact details have yet to be determined.
“There are campaign people out there,” Davidson said. “They’re a whole lot smarter than I am. They’ll be the ones coming up with that.”
If tax passes, jail trust could be dissolved
If the sales tax passes April 7, Lowe said he would push to dissolve the jail trust, which has been plagued by controversy since commissioners created it without a public vote to take over jail management from the sheriff’s office in 2020. Nearly 60 detainees have died at the facility in the more than five years the trust has operated the jail. Currently, the jail has seen no fatalities within a six-month stretch.
“Once this passes, my expectation would be that we would dissolve the trust,” Lowe said. “Once we dissolve the trust, the sheriff would operate the current site right now, because it will take three to five years for this thing to be built. We just don’t know how long it will take.”
Oklahoma County Sheriff Tommie Johnson said Monday that he also supports the proposed sales tax and would support eliminating the jail trust, on which he currently serves.
Each of Oklahoma’s other 76 counties features some level of sales tax dedicated to public safety.
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“Oklahoma County has never had that, and when you look at our revenue through ad valorem, I think it was like $127 million last year or something like that,” Johnson said. “That money is separated between all of the elected offices and some of the areas that fall under the BOCC.”
Johnson said the area’s growth spurt experienced over the last decade represents one reason why a new jail is needed.
“Our community is growing at a rate where we have to be able to keep up and keep public safety up,” Johnson said. “It’s a not-for-profit business. If you want to be safe and you want to have these services, you have to invest in it. So I’m very proud of Commissioner Lowe for going ahead and pushing this. It certainly takes courage.”
Johnson, a Republican first elected in 2020, also supports returning management of the jail to the sheriff’s office.
“I have never said that I didn’t want to run the jail,” Johnson said. “I have always been honest and open with people and said I would honor my obligations if the will is to return the jail back to the traditional model with the sheriff running it. I have said I will not run the jail with any semblance of a trust. When I say that, I’m an elected official, so if I suck as a sheriff, in four years the voters of Oklahoma County can come and vote me out of office if I haven’t done a good job or made good decisions to lead this organization.”
Johnson said he wants to be the primary decision maker if his department were to return to running the jail’s daily operations.
“I refuse to put myself in a situation where other people are making decisions that I have to carry out and I have to live or deal with the outcome,” Johnson said. “So if I’m going to run the jail — which I don’t mind — then it’s all or nothing. Give it to me, let me run it, let me get our guys in there, and that would be it. Full stop.”
Davidson, who is also a member of the jail trust, said he is still pondering Lowe’s idea of dissolving the trust.
“I don’t know,” Davidson said. “I’m going to have to look into it. I think accountability is a good thing. I think a lot of what you see, the warts and the scars and everything that you know about today, are things that we didn’t know about when there wasn’t a trust. They were still happening. Make no doubt about that. But now, because of the transparency of the trust, we see those things. And it’s the same with the BOCC. We air everything out in public. I mean, you get to see all the sausage-making is gross.”
Davidson said he wonders whether a trust could remain in place that focuses solely on the jail’s budget and financial issues.
“Does this rendition of the trust with the amount of management oversight need to exist? I don’t know. I think we have great leadership in the jail right now. I’m not sure this (the jail trust) is needed. I’ve long thought more of a financial trust, and controlling the finances is probably a better thing.”
Underscoring arguments for the new sales tax to fund operations, however, jail administrator Tim Kimrey proposed a budget item to cover staff raises at Monday’s jail trust meeting. With the jail already facing an estimated budget shortfall amid efforts to improve outcomes, the board deferred taking action on the pay raise proposal.
“I understand the budget. But for the last six years, we’ve got $33 million every year. We’ve had an average of a 4 percent inflation every year for the last six years. I was a history guy, not a math guy. I don’t have a math degree. But that’s not going to work,” Kimrey said. “It takes more than $33 million to run the jail. We are in deficit spending, but we want to run the jail the way it needs to be run, and if we don’t we’re going to go back. We’re going to lose these four months that we’ve achieved, and we’re going to go back to what we had in the past.”
Sales tax plan already faces opposition
People’s Council for Justice Reform leader Mark Faulk has long been a critic of the jail trust, and he also opposes creating a sales tax to fund construction of the new jail. After years of attending jail trust and board of commissioners meetings, Faulk is now running against Lowe for the District 1 seat.
“It has been brought to my attention that Commissioner Lowe will ask for the trust to dissolve itself,” Faulk told jail trust members during the public comment section of Monday’s meeting. “While I would love to see that, that’s what we have begged, pleaded, asked, and cried for the last five years. That’s what a grand jury decided needed to happen. That’s what Joe Allbaugh, one of your chairs, said should happen when he resigned. What I want to know is this: 60 deaths later, how many lives would have been saved had we admitted this is a failed experiment? And here we are, six years later, the only reason I believe we are doing it is because they want a tax pushed through. And they are grasping at anything to talk us into giving them more money. This is about money over lives, and it’s been that way for six years. We are tired of it.”
In an interview, Johnson said he is “grateful to God that sometimes you allow people to see the shoe on the other foot.”
“When I was running my campaign (in 2020), all you heard was, ‘This isn’t a money issue, it’s a management issue.’ They said that when they took the jail away from the sheriff, and they said, ‘If we had better managers, we could lead this organization, and it could be successful.’ And that has clearly not happened, because now when you look at anybody who is talking about the jail, they are saying, ‘It doesn’t matter who manages it because there’s not enough money,'” Johnson said. “So I’m grateful that that has now been seen and it’s no longer a talking point that can be used. You have to have money to run this facility. You have to have money to manage the facility.”
Johnson said he hopes other leaders in the area support the proposed county sales tax. Though the City of OKC is not on the hook for operational costs of the county jail, OKC police arrest the vast majority of those housed there.
“You have to have the courage to go out and ask for the things you need yourself. As a county, when you look at the polling, I certainly see favorable numbers there,” Johnson said. “I think you’ve got to go out to the citizenry and have a good message on the reasons why we need this.”
Currently, the jail’s population is around 1,400 detainees, with about 1,000 of those housed in the facility arrested by OKC police. The city and county have also been at odds over reimbursement for the daily costs of housing those arrested by the city. The previous agreement expired in July and has not yet been successfully renegotiated. The city and county have also dueled over zoning issues at the new jail site.
“I’d love to see them support this because it affects and involves every city in Oklahoma County,” Johnson said of area leaders. “I could see a situation where, right now, we’re having contract negotiations with Oklahoma City on housing of inmates on municipal charges and things of that nature. If you’re able to get this revenue, you possibly don’t even have to charge cities for housing inmates now because you have money to be able to provide those services. I’m not saying that contractual agreements won’t happen in certain situations, but it won’t be the situation we’re in now.”
Saying he “100 percent” would like to see business leaders and city government officials support the proposal, Johnson called OKC Mayor David Holt “a man I truly love and enjoy and have a personal friendship with.”
“I think you can go to him and just give him the facts to see how this benefits the county in its entirety,” Johnson said. “People don’t always have to agree with your decisions (…). Even if they didn’t agree with it or it may put them in a certain position, I think they can appreciate, ‘Hey, these people are fighting for what they believe is best for their community,’ and I think anybody can respect that, regardless of their decision on it.
“I can live life fighting for what’s right and doing the right thing and coming up short and losing, rather than saying, ‘Hey, I don’t think I have a chance,’ and you don’t do anything at all and live with those outcomes.”
