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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > July > 17
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Editorial: Ohio should force counties to cooperate
Late in June, overcrowding forced Miami County Sheriff Charles Cox to close the county jail in downtown Troy to any offenders who aren’t violent or who hadn’t committed a felony.
A couple miles away, a second jail constructed just a decade ago sits empty. Earlier this year, Miami County shut it down and laid off 40 workers.
Before you lay blame on the county commission and the people who work for them, think again. At one time, building the second jail was a smart move. And, believe it or not, the project didn’t cost Miami County a dime.
Miami County was able to get “free” money from the state to fix a problem it had. But there were no requirements to determine if solving Miami County’s problems might also fix problems at other nearby county jails.
That’s just the way things work in Ohio. Counties and other local governments, too, are allowed and even encouraged and rewarded financially when they act as islands.
It’s bad policy and a wasteful approach, as evidenced by a 240-bed jail going unused at the same time the sheriff is releasing inmates for lack of space.
In the late 1990s, Ohio simply didn’t have enough jail space. Counties with overcrowded jails were shipping prisoners out to neighboring communities that had open beds, and they paid good money for those prisoners to be housed.
Counties like Miami and Auglaize saw an opportunity: they could build updated jails with extra space, solve their own overcrowding problems and help pay the operating bills by attracting out-of-county prisoners.
Miami County, which was spending more than $80,000 in 1999 to house its overflow prisoners in other counties, took a particularly shrewd approach. It proposed a jail with four 60-bed units, each of which could be closed down in lean times and reopened when the population surged.
Planners emphasized that housing out-of-county prisoners could actually be a new revenue source. Even better, the state was awarding grants to build new jails.
Miami County eventually won more than enough funding to cover the entire $5.8 million cost. It even turned money back to the state at the project’s end.
For a while, things worked exactly as planned. But over time, nearby counties built their own new jails. Some places, notably Montgomery County, also got much better at managing their jail populations, further reducing the need for beds in Miami.
Today, there simply isn’t enough business to support the second jail, but Miami County has too many prisoners for one jail.
What if, instead of just handing out money for new jails, Ohio had insisted neighboring counties collaborate on a joint plan to manage their prisoner populations and made that a condition of getting grants? Before Miami County built its second jail, it tried and failed to get its neighbors to go together on a jail.
If counties were grouped regionally and the combined prisoner population was jointly managed, there is no doubt everybody could save money. Left instead to fend for themselves, each county naturally did its best to get what it needed and, if possible, profit from the challenges faced by neighbors.
Had everyone been on the same page, Miami County probably wouldn’t have an empty jail and former prisoners wouldn’t be walking free before their time was up.
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