Josephine County Still Reeling

The City Council in Grants Pass, OR has voted to fund 20 beds in the Josephine County jail by paying $1 million to the county. 

Tired of seeing people arrested on criminal charges walk free for lack of jail space, the city of Grants Pass is paying nearly $1 million for its own beds in the county jail.
And to make sure the bad guys know it, the city will be posting signs around town saying lawbreakers can expect to be prosecuted.

The voters in the county have repeatedly voted down property tax increases to fund law enforcement, forcing some communities to organize armed citizen patrols to make up for lack of law enforcement, a move that the County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson says “I hold my breath, every day, for everything”.  He is not thrilled that citizens are arming themselves for protection, but he can't provide coverage with the funding he has.

With the fiscal year that started on July 1, the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office now has exactly one deputy left available for general calls in a county of 83,000 people — down from a high of 22 at full staffing a few years ago. Citizen applications to carry a concealed weapon, meanwhile, rose 49 percent last year, according to county records.

At grocery stores in Grants Pass, stopping and citing shoplifters — sometimes with whole carts of beer or food in tow — have become part of the daily law enforcement routine.

Keith O. Heck, a county commissioner, said he fears that the county could break apart into balkanized camps of self-government, each on its own lookout, if a fix to the problem is not found soon.

“Freedom demands structure,” he said. “If you don’t have some structure to that freedom, there’s nothing that is free — everything just becomes a crapshoot and it’s just who’s got the biggest dice.”

At the Grants Pass Liquor Store, it all comes down to whether customers feel safe, said Jack Ingvaldson, the owner. Lately, he said, some do not.

“We have homeless people sitting in the alleyway — they drink, urinate, defecate, fornicate — whatever they can get away with,” he said. And a ticket or citation from a police officer? They laugh and stay put. “They don’t care — they know there’s nowhere to put them,” he said.

 My thought is that the 20 beds will be filled quickly, it's not enough to stop the bleeding, only slow it down a little.

 

A Perfect Fiscal Storm in Southern Oregon

In Southeastern Oregon, a perfect fiscal storm has been brewing for years, and Josephine and Curry counties are facing the prospect of bankruptcy, with unknown consequences.  According to an audit prepared by the Secretary of State, the county has already reduced services to a dangerous level.

Curry has the second lowest property tax rate in Oregon and is heavily reliant on federal timber payments.  The county’s unemployment rate has remained high, and spending on public safety is in the bottom 10 among counties.

 According to an article in the Oregonian, time is about to run out, sooner for Curry county, but Josephine is not far behind.

The spreading sense of crisis is coming to a head this month, with officials at the local, state and federal level all feeling pressure to head off the threat of what some darkly describe as Oregon's "zombie counties."

In Salem, legislators are working on legislation that would allow the state to take over some county functions. More drastically, they are considering a bill that would allow the governor -- with the approval of legislative leaders and local officials -- to impose a temporary local income tax to preserve basic police, court and jail operations.
 In Washington, D.C., legislation aimed at increasing logging on federal timberlands in western Oregon is starting to move through Congress after being stalled for years, and pressure is building on Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., to take charge of the process.
Wyden, the new chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over federal forests, promises to come up with a strategy and timeline this month for putting together a bill he thinks can pass Congress and be signed into law.
He says local approval of levy requests would help him sell lawmakers on the plan, which Wyden has already said would include extending federal timber payments to the counties for another year or two.
If those measures pass, he said, "it takes off the table the issue that these communities aren't stepping up."

Josephine and Curry have the lowest tax rates in Oregon and voters have stubbornly kept it that way.  At some point their wounds may be deemed to be largely self inflicted, and they may get higher taxes forced on them by whoever has to bail them out.  If voters turn down the public safety levy on the ballot this month in both counties, their law enforcement will completely collapse, it's on life support already.  They will close their jails and who knows what's next?

"We can't ignore it," said Rep. Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, adding that a governor can't simply tell the public that it's not safe to travel through some counties.