Lockhart
District 1 Commissioner Bruce Tabor said the commissioners may turn the money-strapped county jail over to Sheriff Ron Lockhart.
Lockhart has said he will take over the jail if necessary, but also has concerns about not having enough money to operate the jail.
The Sequoyah County Criminal Justice Authority voted Monday to begin the legal process to close the jail. During the meeting Jail Administrator Christine Calbert announced that by the end of July the jail would only have $8,989.40 in accounts, not enough to continue operations.
Sequoyah County voters turned down a proposal for a one-sixth of a cent sales tax for jail operations on June 9, and authority members have been wrestling with jail operations and funding ever since.
Tabor said Thursday that he and Sheriff Ron Lockhart visited with John David Luton, first assistant district attorney, about the jail’s funding problems and closing the jail.
“The assistant district attorney said an attorney general’s opinion says we can’t close the jail,” Tabor said. “Now the attorney general is saying it is a constitutional office and has to remain open.”
Since the attorneys’ opinions are that the jail can’t be closed, “It will probably go to the sheriff,” Tabor said. “It is our only alternative.”
The authority’s choices were closing the jail, contracting with a private company to operate the jail or turning the jail back to the sheriff and the county budget.
County commissioners and jail authority members were trying to avoid turning the jail over to the sheriff, because the county also has little money. The commissioners said the county has a budget of about $2 million, and the sheriff’s office gets about $500,000 of that. District 2 Commissioner Steve Carter did a study last year, which revealed the jail needed at least $740,000 for operations. That amount has increased now, he said Tuesday, because of rising costs.
Turning the jail over to the sheriff will “devastate” the county budget, the commissioners have said, and will probably result in layoffs in other offices.
County Clerk Vickie Sawney said money for the jail from a one-sixth of a cent sales tax already in place, which raises about $30,000 a month, cannot be mixed with county funds because the jail, run by an authority, is a separate entity.
However, Tabor said Thursday, if the jail is turned over to the sheriff that sales tax will continue. Tabor said he was told that, if the jail was closed, the sales tax would cease. In order to keep the tax, the only money coming in for jail operations, it must remain open, Tabor said he was told.
The remaining amount of money to operate the jail will have to come from the county budget once it is under the sheriff’s, and county’s, control.
The jail’s biggest budget item is salaries, since the state requires that the 114-bed facility have 27 employees, regardless of the number of prisoners housed at any one time. Tabor said salaries probably run between 70 and 80 percent of the jail’s budget.
If the jail is turned over to the sheriff, most likely on Aug. 1, the sheriff will have to start cross training his deputies to be jailers, Tabor said.
Tabor also said that the authority would remain in tact, but dormant, if the sheriff takes over the jail.
“We’ll look at that later,” Tabor said, “but we’ll probably keep it in case it’s needed later.”
The authority members are Tabor, Lockhart, District 3 Commissioner Mike Huff, Muldrow Police Chief Tony Lewis, and Dennis Fields of Gore, a retired police officer.
The jail’s only other source of funding, under the authority’s oversight, was from housing Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoners. At one time the jail had 38 DOC prisoners, and was receiving $31.50 per day per prisoner for housing. But the DOC has begun removing state prisoners from county jails, and, as of Monday, the county jail had only 10. The lack of state prisoners depleted the jail’s money.
