Voters will decide a $260 million bond referendum whose proceeds would be used to replace Oklahoma County’s troubled jail after the county board on Monday placed the measure on the June 28 primary election ballot.
Despite objections voiced by speakers at the meeting over the cost of the project or the need for more restorative justice measures instead of incarceration, all three commissioners voted in favor of the referendum.
"[The current building] does not meet our needs at all,” County Commissioner Carrie Blumert said at the meeting. “There’s no space for medical, there’s no space for proper mental health treatment, there’s no space for recreation, there’s no space for anything but cells. We’ve got to do better.”
The 13-story detention center located in Oklahoma City, which opened in 1991, had an average prisoner population of 1,625 in March.
County Commissioner Brian Maughan said improvements undertaken at the current facility have staved off intervention by the federal government.
“But that can’t go on forever,” he said. “The risk of the federal government coming in and taking over our problem and handing down how they’re going to finance it and how they’re going to fix it is taking away local control.”
Under a 2009 memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Justice, the county agreed to take steps to improve conditions at the jail with the expectation that in four years the facility would be renovated, or efforts would begin to replace or expand it.
In 2008, the DOJ reported unsafe, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions at the jail, as well as inadequate healthcare and mental healthcare services. The Oklahoma County Jail Trust took over management of the facility in 2020 and made some improvements.
The 30-year general obligation limited tax bonds would be paid off with funds from the county’s property taxes. If approved by voters, the county board would have to authorize the bond sale once a new facility is designed, according to John Michael Williams, the county's bond counsel.
Maughan told The Bond Buyer that other funding, in addition to the bond proceeds, would be needed and the county was considering freeing up general fund money for the jail by using federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars for other county expenses.
County commissioners also agreed to create a citizen's oversight committee that would oversee and make recommendations to the county board on the location, development, design, and construction of a jail.
