A significant moment of reckoning in the debate about the Hancock County Jail — and, indeed, about criminal justice in general in the county — took place recently.
That reckoning was a vote by the Hancock County Council to approve a request to spend up to $75,000 to hire an additional deputy in the Hancock County prosecutor’s office. The 4-3 vote was remarkable for two reasons. First, the council rarely approves emergency new hires outside its normal budget-writing process every summer. And second, the vote suggests a majority of council members recognizes that the can has been kicked down the road long enough.
It’s anyone’s guess where that can eventually will wind up. There are grave questions about the county’s ability to afford both a new jail — the price for which is being put at about $43 million — and the staff that will be needed to run it. And that’s just to start. Unaddressed to this point is the need for more sheriff’s deputies, even more deputy prosecutors and more probation officers, who currently handle more than 100 cases apiece coming out of the county courts with more being added every day.
But first things first.
Taxpayers so far have been left to guess the total operating costs for a new jail once it opens. A serious, open conversation on the topic needs to happen soon. Sheriff Brad Burkhart has presented an analysis suggesting the jail staff will need to nearly double to properly operate the new facility. That’s upwards of 30 jailers. Outside of a suggestion — logical, in our view — that the hiring be done in phases, no one seems to have put pen to paper to tell us how much all this might eventually cost annually.
The county council already has twice raised the local income tax in the past year — once to underwrite yearly expenses at the county 911 center; and then to pay for construction of the new jail. Unless council budget chairman Jim Shelby and council President Bill Bolander can pull a rabbit out of their hat, some other type of tax increase seems inevitable later this year or in 2020. There aren’t enough places to cut the county budget to pay for two dozen positions at the jail.
That’s why the recent vote — which left Shelby and Bolander, who voted against the appropriation, in the minority — was so significant. It showed some members of the council might be ready to confront what will be a difficult conversation.
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