PORTLAND, Ore. — The Multnomah County board of commissioners voted Thursday to approve a one-time allocation of $3.4 million in general fund dollars for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, which requested the budgetary boost earlier this month and warned that without the money, it would need to close 219 of the county's 1,130 jail beds.
The sheriff's office said the shortfall was related to Oregon's 1995 Senate Bill 1145, which set up county jails to house certain inmates that would previously have gone to prison under the Oregon Department of Corrections. The real-world costs of doing so have outstripped the added funding that accompanied the bill, according to the county. The county has made these sorts of supplemental allocations multiple times in the past.
Without the added funding, county officials said the jail's emergency plan would have been to begin releasing inmates held on lower-level charges to free up space if the jails hit 95% capacity. The county had 948 adults in custody as of Aug. 20, so the roughly 20% reduction caused by the funding shortfall would have triggered the emergency plan.
The request from the sheriff's office included $3 million to keep the jail beds open and another $418,000 to add two corrections counselors and a records technician.
The request was combined with requests for other allocations for the county's Department of Community Justice and the Local Public Safety Coordinating Council, all of which totaled up to just over $6.3 million. The commissioners passed the package unanimously after adding an amendment, but the amendment didn't impact the portion of the funding bound for the sheriff's office.