(The Center Square) – Spokane owes two months of unpaid jail bills totaling $1.3 million to the county after officials diverted $6 million from the state’s criminal justice sales tax to homelessness programs.
City leaders claim their jail costs are rising disproportionately compared to Spokane County, as the fund responsible for those charges sits nearly empty. However, county taxpayers are already footing the bill for nearly 2,500 felony offenders arrested within city limits, and data shows there is more to the story.
Mayor Lisa Brown, Chief Financial Officer Matt Boston and other budget officials painted the picture for the Spokane City Council earlier this month. In a joint budget meeting, staff shared data suggesting that the city’s jail costs increased by 78% from 2021 to 2024, while Spokane County’s only rose 10%.
Meanwhile, the city’s average daily population, or ADP, which is its share of inmates across the entire year, only increased from 10.3% to 13.9%. The county’s ADP fell slightly, from 83.8% to 82.3%, but its jail costs actually rose almost 30%, though percentages can obscure some realities of the situation.
Brown, elected in November 2023, inherited the jail crisis from former Mayor Nadine Woodward after taking office in 2024. Woodward’s tenure began in 2020 after her election the previous year. When she took office, the Criminal Justice Assistance Fund, which pays for those jail bills, held about $12 million.
By the time Brown took over, only around $2 million was left, and now the city is out of cash, Jessica Stratton, director of management and budget, told the council and others at the July budget meeting.
“We are currently sitting on two months of bills because we do not have cash to pay them,” she said. “The fund will need an influx of funding to survive, not only this year, but of course, going forward.”
The plan to stabilize the fund involves backfilling it from another account with a $13.4 million deficit.
Where Does That Money Come From and Where Did it Go?
Stratton said the city established the Criminal Justice Assistance Fund, or CJA fund, in 2007 to pay for criminal justice expenses. That money comes from the state’s criminal justice sales tax, with 10% of local revenue going to the county and the remainder split between all the cities on a per capita basis.
The city of Spokane, which is the second-most populous city in Washington, accounts for nearly 40% of the county population. That entitles it to the largest share of the revenue across the entire region.
“The intent, apparently, I wasn’t here in 2007, was that the sales tax would be received and it would go toward the city’s share of the [jail] costs,” Stratton said. “That’s what it’s been doing for years, and this was more than sustainable at the time the sales taxes were coming in higher than the jail cost.”
She said the CJA fund built up a healthy reserve over the years until that became “alluring” during the pandemic. The Legislature approved a law in 2021 that enabled local governments to use the criminal justice tax for homelessness services and behavioral health, but also to supplant existing funding.
That meant the city could pull from its CJA reserves to fill deficits and cover expenses in other funds.
Based on a list of expenses from 2020 to 2025 provided by Communications Director Erin Hut, the city only used the CJA fund for jail bills and electronic monitoring for probation services that first year. That continued into 2021, but the city also used it for a one-time transfer of $72,000 for probation services.
Those expenses aligned with the state’s initial guidelines for the tax revenue, but in 2022, things took a turn. That year, Woodward and the council at the time made several transfers, including $1.3 million for homelessness services, $893,000 for the Spokane Police Department’s Axon contract, $123,000 for probation services and then $28,000 for interpreter costs, representing a considerable hit to the fund.
In 2023, Woodward’s last year in office, the one-time transfers continued, including $4.8 million for homelessness services, $965,000 for SPD’s Axon contract, $180,000 for interpreter services and then another $1.8 million transfer out to SPD and probation services, filling a compounding budget deficit.
“This mayor has been depleting the city’s savings account, plugging holes in her budget with one-time funds and spending beyond the city’s means,” Brown said as a mayoral candidate in 2023, according to reporting by KREM 2. “Every household in Spokane knows that if you are spending more than your income month after month and depleting your savings account, you will soon be in crisis.”
Brown and others have since claimed that unsustainable collective bargaining agreements, police and fire overtime, and federal funding cuts are part of the reason they continue to face revenue shortfalls.
Woodward left office after plugging a $20 million deficit, which rose to $25 million in Brown’s first year.
“The Council has been side-by-side with the Administration in finalizing labor contracts, working to control public safety overtime, and finding funding solutions,” Woodward wrote in a statement after the council passed the 2024 budget. “The combination of efficiencies we’ve gained, updating of fee schedules, expanding the use of special-purpose funds, and strategically using bridge strategies is a significant step forward and through the economic downturn.”
Brown and the council balanced that $25 million hole heading into 2025 by raising taxes and making some cuts, but she also made several one-time transfers in 2024 to keep the budget afloat. According to the CJA fund expenses, she and the council pulled $965,000 from that account last year for SPD’s Axon contract, $262,000 for interpreter costs and another $317,000 for SPD and probation services.
The one-time transfers continued into 2025, with $965,000 for SPD’s Axon contract and $150,000 for interpreter costs. Now, Stratton says the CJA fund doesn’t even have enough left to cover the monthly jail bills anymore. Hut told The Center Square that the city plans to stabilize it with the general fund.
The issue with that is that the general fund faces a deficit of roughly $13.4 million ahead of next year.
Any money that the city backfills into the CJA fund from the general fund may necessitate further cuts.
“The jail costs being allocated to the city of Spokane simply outpace the sales tax revenue that we are receiving from the state,” Stratton said. However, the CJA fund would have more in it had Woodward cut spending sooner, but she attributed her shortfall at the time to the pandemic and other pressures.
Spokane’s jail costs did increase 78% from 2021 to 2024, but the city’s total inmate days, which helps calculate ADP, only surpassed prepandemic levels last year. That drop in total inmate days throughout the pandemic brought savings that Woodward could spend as the city addressed its Camp Hope crisis.
Had revenue growth kept pace, the fund may have stabilized, but it didn’t, and transfers continued.
Are Spokane’s Jail Costs Rising Disproportionately Compared to Spokane County?
Last year, inmate days among all local jurisdictions reached 283,985, 6% less compared to when the pandemic started in 2019. The city logged 39,575 of those inmate days, 21.8% more than in 2019, while the county recorded 233,744 inmate days, almost 9% less than when the pandemic had started.
The county did log far more inmate days than the city, but there’s more to the story. The jail is still logging fewer days overall than just before the pandemic. The county’s responsibility aligns with that trend, but the city’s share of inmate days is now higher than in 2019 as everyone else still catches up.
The city claims its jail costs are rising disproportionately because from 2021 to 2024, its ADP only rose from 10.3% to 13.9%, while its costs increased by 78%. Staff cited the county’s decline in ADP, from 83.8% to 82.3%, and the 30% rise in costs as evidence, but ADP is only part of the billing process.
In reality, the city’s jail costs rose $3.26 million while the county’s costs increased by $10.03 million.
When comparing inmate days from both jurisdictions, the city logged 67% more days in 2024 than in 2021, while the county only logged 21.5% more days in 2024 compared to 2021. Both figures still fall below their respective increases in cost across that period, but provide more context as to why it rose.
Michael Sparber, the county’s senior director of law and justice, told The Center Square that they use the previous year’s ADPs to give each jurisdiction a baseline to help establish their budgets. If the city logs more days than the year before, the county sends another bill to make up for the difference.
Boston and Stratton said that the city received a $1.5 million bill for the difference in costs for last year, and expect the next one to reach nearly $3 million at the end of 2025. That bill would be even higher if it weren’t for the city and county’s agreement that only requires Spokane to pay for misdemeanors.
Sparber said if SPD arrests someone on a dozen misdemeanors and a single felony, the county incurs the costs of housing the inmate on all those charges, regardless of where the crimes were committed.
The county is responsible for felony inmates, even if SPD arrested them in the city on misdemeanor charges as well. According to data provided by Sparber, law enforcement has arrested over 4,800 people on felony charges across the entire county over the last year. SPD accounted for 50.7% of those felony arrests, while the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office made up 27.7% of the total figure.
He said county taxpayers are footing the bill for feeding, housing, transporting, litigating, and more for nearly 2,500 felony arrests within city limits over the past year. The state requires the county to cover the felony costs, but Sparber said the city could end up paying for each misdemeanor in the future.
“The county is evolving by modifying its contracts with the cities to a more equitable billing methodology,” Sparber told The Center Square, “where the cities are responsible for their portion of the actual costs on a per individual misdemeanor charge basis.”
The city and county’s jail contract automatically renews each year based on their 2011 agreement.
Woodward was renegotiating the contract before leaving office, but the conversation stalled as the county pushed a tax measure to replace the long-outdated and overcrowded facility downtown. That proposal failed at the ballot, leaving the county with a jail constantly entering a red-light status.
When asked if the county would reduce the city’s jail booking access if it didn’t pay up, Spaber said they still had not received the money, but “historically the county has never had any issues receiving payment from the City that would cause us to alter booking access.”
THE CONFESSIONAL IS NOT A LEGAL LOOPHOLE FOR CHILD ABUSERS
“We’re going to pay the bill. No matter if we pay on time or not, our jail is constantly in red light status due to inadequate staffing,” Hut told The Center Square on July 24. “Access to the jail has historically been an issue. As we charge for more crimes, it becomes increasingly burdensome.”
Shortly before publishing, Hut told The Center Square that the city just received some more tax revenue and plans to pay the bills in the next few days. The money will keep the CJA fund afloat in the short-term, but like Stratton said, it will still require an influx of funding moving forward.