Davis County is running what amounts to a regional prison, a county commissioner told lawmakers Wednesday during a hearing on whether the state should reimburse local governments for jailing state prisoners.
"By definition, we are running a regional prison in Davis County," County Commissioner J. Dell Holbrook told members of the Interim Appropriations Committee.Holbrook said criminals sentenced by state judges to the Davis County Justice Complex on felony charges "are essentially the same thing as state prisoners."
Davis County Sheriff Glenn Clary testified the actual cost of housing such inmates is $49 a day. Although the federal government reimburses the county that amount, the state has paid only $30 a day in the past.
Those payments ceased in 1989 based in part on budget concerns, forcing local governments to pick up the cost of housing state prisoners sentenced to local facilities.
The state does continue to reimburse local governments for housing state prisoners on a contract basis. The difference is, when judges send inmates to local facilities, local governments have no choice but to pick up the cost.
Clary said that last year alone Davis County taxpayers spent $316,000 on room and board for state prisoners sentenced to do their time there, based on the $30-per-day rate.
Utah County Sheriff Dave Bateman told the committee that a bond issue that will go before voters in November wouldn't be necessary if the county wasn't housing state prisoners.
Bateman said about 25 percent of the inmates at the Utah County Jail are state prisoners. The $18 million bond issue would build a new jail to at least double the current 138-inmate capacity.
He and other law enforcement officials said the counties also are paying for state prisoners' medical care, which can add thousands of dollars to housing costs.
Bateman said many of the state prisoners are in poorer health than other inmates and require everything from isolation for tuberculosis to open-heart surgery.
"This is a pretty clear-cut case of the state mandating costs on counties," the executive director of the Utah Association of Counties, Brent Gardner, said. "This is our No. 1 priority."
Members of the legislative interim committee spent most of their time debating terminology, such as whether a criminal sentenced for a state offense by a state judge to a local jail is actually a state prisoner.
After more than 11/2 hours on the issue, the co-chairmen of the committee agreed to meet with their counterparts on the State and Local Affairs Interim Committee to decide which committee should consider it.
Jail reimbursement is scheduled to be discussed again by the Interim Appropriations Committee in November. Repeated efforts to settle the issue in past years have failed.
The most recent attempt came during the 1992 Legislature, when House Assistant Majority Whip Christine Fox, R-Lehi, proposed giving local governments $3.5 million in $500,000 increments over five years.
Fox said the total cost of reimbursing local governments at the $30-per-day rate is $4 million.