The City of Spokane can’t afford to pay what Spokane County is charging for jail beds.
The city is sitting on two months of unpaid jail bills. That’s about $1 million, City Management and Budget Director Jessica Stratton said in a mid-July special budget hearing.
Spokane’s Criminal Justice Assistance Fund, which the city has used to pay for jail beds since 2007, is empty. The fund is typically filled with dollars from the state criminal justice sales tax.
“This was more than sustainable at the time,” Stratton said in the meeting. “The sales taxes were coming in higher than the jail cost, so the fund itself built up a healthy fund balance.”
But those extra dollars “became alluring” during financial stress brought on by the COVID pandemic.
The city dipped into the fund to pay the police department’s Axon contract, electronic monitoring costs and interpreter fees for the courts.
“Finally, during 2022 and 2023, over $6 million in homeless services and administration was paid out of this fund,” Stratton said.
Legally, this was allowed under the state’s 2021 fiscal flexibility bill.
But the extra draw-outs completely drained the Criminal Justice Assistance Fund. Now, jail bed operation costs are exceeding the state tax dollars going into the fund.
It also costs more to run the jail. The total cost in 2021 was more than $40.3 million. In 2024, operations exceeded $53.2 million.
“The county has not been immune from rising costs that we're seeing both with employee contracts, employee benefits, transportation, overtime,” said Spokane County spokesperson Pat Bell. “It is a 24/7 operation, 365 days a year. We are required to provide that statutory level of care [for the] inmate population. As that population grows or changes, you can see some of these costs change as well.”
The county pays for the majority of operating costs, but contracting agencies bear the rising costs, too.
The county estimates how much it will cost to operate the beds, but then sends a final bill after its operating costs are actualized.
The City of Spokane is the largest contracting agency. In 2021, the city paid about $4 million to use about 10% of the county’s jail beds. In 2024, the yearly bill came to almost $7.5 million for about 14% of beds.
There’s a chance it could increase even more in coming years.
The agency responsible for paying for an inmate’s jail time is based on which court has jurisdiction. That means any person charged with a felony is automatically under the county’s jurisdiction, and anyone charged with a misdemeanor is the responsibility of a city.
That means if someone was arrested in Spokane and charged with multiple misdemeanors and a felony, the county would be responsible for paying for their bed and care in jail.
“There's been a multi-year effort on behalf of the county with a cost study looking for a more equitable portion of those costs—where cities would be charged for holding inmates based on their misdemeanors,” Bell said. “But none of that has taken place or been implemented yet. It's still an ongoing study at the county level.”
The county and city are operating under an interlocal agreement that was written in 2011 and renews by default. It’s unclear what would happen if the city continues to be unable to pay.
“I think it's a hypothetical at this point,” Bell said. “I'm not sure what history has shown in terms of if we've been in this situation before. But if the city had an alternative and wanted to house in another county or was looking to start some kind of their own municipal jail, the past contract does stipulate they need to give us the intent to terminate and 180-days notice so that we could both plan accordingly.”
