The sales tax increase to support more jail beds will charge an extra penny for every $5 spent on purchases not including groceries and is expected to be imposed starting July 1. (Illustration by Alex Cochran for New Jersey Monitor)
Facing pressure from Utah’s Republican-controlled Legislature to jail — and hold — more criminal offenders, Salt Lake County leaders decided to raise taxes in order to expand their county’s jail capacity.
The Salt Lake County Council voted 7-2 on Tuesday to raise sales taxes by 0.2% — or $76 million — to fund transportation projects and public safety needs. Of that $76 million, the county will use $19 million to fund a combined total of 248 more jail beds and criminal justice programs, while the remaining money will go to county and city transportation projects.
Two Republican council members (Sheldon Stewart and Carlos Moreno) voted against raising taxes on Salt Lake County residents, while three other Republicans (Council Chair Laurie Stringham, Aimee Winder Newton and Dea Theodore) reluctantly joined Democrats to approve the hike, saying they faced no other choice in order to address the county’s overflowing jail.
“This is not a popular vote for me, because I don’t like raising taxes in any form. So a sales tax like this, yeah, it’s burdensome, and I apologize,” Theodore said. “But I want a safe community. And we are at a point where we have no other choice.”
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The vote came a week after the Salt Lake County Council, during a work session, gave an initial nod to the proposal, when Stringham, who was initially on the fence, said she’d support it because Utah lawmakers frustrated with crime in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County are moving to increase certain penalties while also requiring jails to hold repeat offenders longer.
“The pressure being put on us from the state legislature and leadership there to fix this this minute, and not giving us a chance or a couple of years to figure this out … is not very fair, to be honest,” she said. “So, we’re going to fix it, but this is the only mechanism, really, we have to fix it at this moment.”
Raising sales tax after voters reject $507 million bond
This was plan B for Salt Lake County leaders. The tax hike comes just months after Salt Lake County voters narrowly rejected a $507 million bond meant to more holistically tackle the county’s jail crisis with a plan that would have resulted in a net increase of 444 jail beds and funded a new “justice and accountability” center.
However, that plan failed, and county leaders had to return to the drawing board all while patience on Utah’s Capitol Hill wore thin.
A bill sponsored by an influential member of Republican legislative leadership — House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield — aimed at addressing jail overcrowding has been progressing through the Utah Legislature. With HB312, Lisonbee wants to set limits on which inmates county sheriffs can release due to lack of jail capacity.
Before releasing inmates due to jail overcrowding, HB312 would require sheriffs to contract with another county jail to free up jail space for inmates accused of certain crimes, including violent and drug offenses, and those accused of driving under the influence and causing a crash that resulted in death or serious injury.
The bill would also restrict releasing inmates accused of committing another crime within 30 days of a previous arrest, if they had been previously booked into the same jail within 12 months, or if they’re a “habitual offender” who has failed to appear in court.
While presenting her bill to a House committee earlier this month, Lisonbee criticized Salt Lake County for releasing nearly 4,000 arrestees out of more than 29,000 bookings last year. She also criticized county leaders for not expanding jail capacity in 24 years, all while the county’s population has increased by 300,000 people.
“When cities and counties fail to provide resources and support for public safety, the impacts are not only felt by the city but they are felt statewide,” Lisonbee said on the House floor last week before her colleagues voted 60-12 to advance the bill to the Senate.
When asked during a House committee earlier this month whether her bill would come with funding to help counties pay for needed jail capacity, Lisonbee said that’s something counties should pay for, not the state.
“Other counties in the last 24 years have increased capacity. In fact, many counties have, and they have all borne that cost,” she said. “So certainly, no. It’s not appropriate for the state to come in and bear the cost of one county when it hasn’t for all the others.”
Salt Lake County Council members Stewart and Moreno argued county officials should find cuts in the county’s $2 billion budget, while others including Winder Newton argued county officials are always looking for efficiencies, and there’s simply nowhere to cut in the county’s $600 million general fund, of which more than 74% is used for public safety. The rest, she said, funds independently elected officials and their offices.
“This is something we need to do. Our state legislative leaders have also encouraged us to do this,” Winder Newton said, pointing to Lisonbee’s bill. “This is something we need to act quickly on.”
During a public hearing Tuesday, county leaders faced some residents urging them not to raise taxes to fund more jail beds, including Shannon Woulfe, who argued Salt Lake County pocketbooks are already strained and that a sales tax increase wasn’t the right vehicle, arguing it’s a “regressive” tax that disproportionately impacts low-income people — as do policies that encourage increased enforcement.
“It is wild, it is unjustifiable, to ask for families to kind of foot the bill to jail themselves,” Woulfe said, urging county leaders to expand treatment beds and permanent housing rather than jail beds. “That’s where we should be focusing our money.”
Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera, however, last week urged council members to address jail capacity issues, which have been a problem even longer than the eight years she’s served as sheriff.
“The way the population has grown and will continue to grow, we have to do something,” Rivera said. “Our communities are saying, ‘You need to do something to keep these folks in jail,’ but when you don’t have enough space to keep individuals, who are even the violent offenders, we’re struggling.”
Rivera said county leaders need to find another funding source “right now,” so they can build out plans for future expansion. “What the legislature is doing to us is really an example of what could happen in the near future, of more people complaining that we don’t have the space,” she said.
What does this sales tax hike mean — and will it be enough?
Salt Lake County leaders opted to fund the jail expansion through a “local option” sales tax hike that counties can enact thanks to a law passed by the 2018 Utah Legislature that was later updated last year to give Salt Lake County the ability to use its portion of the tax for public safety.
State law requires half of the funding ($38 million) to be spent on transportation projects within Salt Lake County. Of the remaining funds, a quarter will be set aside for cities to spend on transportation needs, while the remaining quarter ($19 million) will go to Salt Lake County to be spent on “public safety” needs, according to county officials.
Of that $19 million of annual revenue generated by the tax, $6.4 million will fund ongoing operations to expand capacity at Salt Lake County’s Oxbow Jail by 184 beds, plus $1.5 million to free up 64 additional beds at the Salt Lake County Metro Jail by discontinuing the state contract for a competency restoration program that currently occupies that unit of the Metro jail.
The remaining $11.1 million of ongoing public safety money generated by the tax will be used to fund deferred maintenance needed to keep Oxbow open, future renovations at the Metro jail, and other programs aimed at reducing recidivism, according to county officials.
The tax — which will charge an extra penny for every $5 spent on purchases not including groceries — is expected to be imposed starting July 1.
However, according to an FAQ document Winder Newton circulated at Tuesday’s public meeting, county officials don’t expect the $19 million in public safety sales tax dollars to be enough to comprehensively tackle the county’s jail crisis.
The $507 million public safety bond that voters rejected in November “will still need to be passed in the future,” that document says. But in the meantime, the sales tax funds will “take care of immediate capital improvements at the aging Oxbow Jail, so that remaining beds can be opened and staffed.”
The tax will also provide “continued funding that will be needed” once county officials expand the Salt Lake County Metro Jail, for which county officials have saved $100 million to fund, and add a “step-down” facility to help inmates transition into society.
“These reserve funds will provide initial funding to open the remaining beds at the Oxbow Jail until the local option sales tax revenue is generated,” Winder Newton’s document said. “This allows us to move as quickly as possible to get the jail beds up and running.”
Winder Newton also acknowledged calls for more mental health resources, noting that in April the new Kem and Carolyn Gardner Crisis Care Center at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute in Salt Lake City is slated to open. She said that facility is envisioned to be an alternative to hospital emergency rooms or jails for people suffering from mental illness, and it’s expected to free up capacity at the Salt Lake County jail.
County Council member Arlyn Bradshaw, a Democrat, voted in favor of the sales tax hike, saying he wasn’t a “fan” of increasing sales taxes, but he took “solace” in knowing the tax isn’t on groceries and wouldn’t “continue to increase that price of eggs that seems to be the focus” of frustrations of rising costs.
“At the end of the day, we as a county are being asked to do more in this space,” Bradshaw said. “And we can’t do more without additional resources.”
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