Statement on December 19 press conference re: the jail project
I’ve been asked for a statement on yesterday’s Jail Consolidation Project press conference held by Executive Parisi and Sheriff Barrett. In writing this, I aim to provide context and edification as well as a response to the questions posed in the conference.
On December 19, County Executive Joe Parisi and Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett held a press conference on the Jail Consolidation Project. They spoke to the press about two funding options that they’d like me to vote on at our January Board meeting.
I’m coming from behind here, because I was not made aware of the Executive and Sheriff’s press conference until members of the press asked me to react to it. Here is my statement.
First, some timeline facts:
Progress toward the larger, 6-story jail facility continues apace, as it has for some time. Currently, the architects are finalizing the design. We’ve been told that will be done in a matter of weeks (source: Parisi’s budget action memo). After that, the design will be audited and costed so that it can be put to bid. We’re told this will be ready in the spring. Takeaway here is that the soonest this can go to bid is Spring 2023, no matter what the County Board does between now and then.
There is a very likely shortfall of funds for this project. About $166 million has been allocated for it, but we’ve been told based on preliminary design work that this is likely about $10 million less than will be necessary for the construction of the 6-story facility.
In light of this, the County Board considered two plans that would re-align the project to existing budget by reducing its size to 5 stories. We voted one of these plans into the budget. Then Parisi vetoed it. This did not impact the design work on the 6-story tower, as the contractors continued it in parallel to our budget deliberations.
Now, with Parisi’s veto behind us, he and Barrett want the Board to take up funding votes for facility construction in January. They are contemplating two possibilities to add about $13 million to the project's budget: An authorization to move existing funds from a few unrelated projects, or a binding referendum that will allow the voters to decide in the April elections as to whether we should authorize the additional funds.
Some relevant opinion: My position on this project has been and remains clear—the 6-story tower is oversized in addition to being overbudget. That’s why, in the time since April 2022 when I took office, I’ve been working with my Board colleagues on the two rounds of concepts and negotiations referenced in #3 above. I consider this urgent because Barrett, Parisi, and others are right about the inhumane state of our current jail facilities. We have to act, quickly and responsibly.
With respect to “quickly and responsibly,” here are some more facts:
We currently house some of our jail residents outside of Dane County. This is bad; I think all of us (on the Board and at the Sheriff’s office) are in agreement on that.
In multiple meetings (December 15 Board meeting, for example), we’ve learned that a key driver of our need to do so is staffing shortfalls—about 40 positions—at the Dane County Sheriff's Office.
This highlights the need to think of our future facility not only in terms of the initial capital cost for its construction, but also in terms of what money and manpower will be necessary to run it at capacity once built. A smaller facility unquestionably lowers both burdens.
Largely, our jail residents are awaiting trial—they have not been convicted of any crime. And a key driver of our current jail population is the fact that we are still working through a backlog of court cases following COVID-related shutdowns.
Most of the jail residents awaiting trial are not being held for violent felony offenses. They’re in jail simply because they do not have the resources (monetary, legal representation) to wait at home.
The parties in our justice system are working hard to get through this backlog of cases, and they will have done so by the time any new facility is constructed and ready to open.
And, as I’ve written before, another key driver of our jail population is our nation-leading racial disparity in pre-trial incarceration. We shouldn’t ignore this because it would be deeply wrong to do so—and we can’t ignore this because if we brought our disparities in line with the nation’s, our jail population would go down by 200 people.
In a context in which we had 725 people in jail on November 29, these jail population drivers are both proportionally significant. It is thus responsible to consider them as we plan ahead—we have a backlog of court cases that is not permanent, and searing racial disparities to address.
On the latter, our County is working hard. Although I disagree with Parisi on his veto decision and his position at the conference, I give him a ton of credit on this point—he listened to the Black Caucus when the Caucus sounded the alarm on these disparities, creating an office that will specifically focus on addressing this disparity in the coming years. Barrett, too, has signaled time and again that this is important to him.
With all of this in mind, here's some more relevant opinion: The responsible thing to do is to move forward with conviction that we can do this. We must do this. This is what drove me to join many of my colleagues in reducing the size of the jail construction plan accordingly.
Be that as it may, where does this all leave us?
As a result of Parisi’s veto, the larger 6-story facility remains the law of the land. Design work to get it to bid continues apace, my opinion of the plan notwithstanding.
Any numbers presented in January will be a product of guesswork. Educated guesswork, but still guesswork. It won’t be solid until the design work is done come spring.
A vote on one or both of the proposed funding options in January will not change that timeline.
I’m not comfortable voting on funding with these conditions in place. Even when I advocated for a different plan, I did not ask my colleagues to stake hard numbers on additional funding based on rough estimates. This is to avoid a situation in which we find out later that the funding we need is even more significant, and we end up needing to ask our taxpayers to shoulder an even higher burden. I especially can’t imagine asking you to do that after a $13 million referendum!
With all of this in mind, today I’m not in favor of either option presented at the December 19 press conference. If Dane County wants a 6-story tower, let the design work reach its conclusion, and then we can base our actions on a completed design that can be put out to bid.
None of this impacts my ongoing commitment to reducing racial disparities in our justice system, and to moving us to a future in which we use pre-trial incarceration with the prudence and restraint that the people of Dane County deserve.