Jail won’t ask for more cash

Jail Administrator Bryan Brandenburg earlier asked the counties to pay for the expenses directly, based on the percentage of subsidy they already contribute to the jail. Wasco County pays 50 percent of the subsidy, so its share of the request would’ve been $94,112.

Hood River County, at 40 percent, would’ve paid $75,290, and Sherman and Gilliam counties, who each pay a 5 percent subsidy, would’ve paid $9,411 each.

Brandenburg earlier in the budget process said he wanted counties to increase their subsidies, saying they hadn’t done so in several years. The jail’s $6.2 million budget gets $3.8 million in county subsidies and gets the rest from contracts to house inmates and warehouse rental fees.

The jail board also, for at least the third time over the years, declined at its Aug. 16 meeting to make the juvenile representative a voting member of the board.

Rod Runyon, a Wasco County commissioner representing Wasco County on the jail board, asked that the position be made a voting member, saying the jail’s own consultant recommended making the juvenile representative a voting member of the board.

Molly Rogers, the juvenile director for Wasco County and the current juvenile representative on the jail board, said juvenile directors have the same statutory authority over juvenile detention as sheriffs have over adult detention.

She said she believed the argument was unfounded that a juvenile director, as an employee of a county, would be beholden to vote the way their commissioner wanted them to. She felt commissioners were professional and wouldn’t hold juvenile directors hostage to a certain vote.

Sherman County Sheriff Brad Lohrey, who represents sheriffs on the board, said there was a concern that making juvenile a voting member could lead to a tie.

Rogers said the only split votes she’s ever seen on the board were regarding the issue of giving voting powers to the juvenile representative.

Lohrey told the Chronicle later the sheriffs believe it is appropriate for sheriffs to have a vote on the board because they are elected and accountable to voters.

“The juvenile directors are an employee, so in our opinion they could be voting on a budgetary decision, for example, but are not held to the same standard” as sheriffs, he said.

He said juvenile directors don’t have a vote on the board, but they “definitely have an influence” on it.

Brandenburg read some letters into the record that were laudatory of his staff, including one from a person who said his loved one did not get help for her rapid decline in her mental and emotional health from her primary care provider, Mid-Columbia Medical Center, OneCommunity Health or Unity Center for Behavioral Health.

She finally did get help when she was sent to the regional jail.

The letter writer said the jail’s lead mental health clinician, Kathleen Green, “immediately recognized my sister’s symptoms and began to contact the appropriate community agencies to facilitate and coordinated proper placement.”

Brandenburg said the woman spent 10 days in the booking section of the jail. “She never should’ve been in there,” he said.

Another letter, from Katrina McAlexander, the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at the jail, said she has “enjoyed the visionary leadership of Bryan Brandenburg” and adores her colleagues she works with in providing mental health treatment at the jail.

Brandenburg instituted several types of programming at the jail, including parenting, anger management, substance abuse and a re-entry class, as well as creating a mental health unit a year ago. Area law officers got training in crisis intervention, and a jail diversion program for the mentally ill is in place.

Recidivism has dropped from 76 percent to 61 percent, and the severely mentally ill population at the jail has dropped from 38 percent to just 10 percent since Brandenburg came in 2015.

Citizens at the jail board meeting on Aug. 10 and again last Thursday objected to the lack of public input into the administrator hiring process. Brandenburg announced in June he was returning to Alaska to be closer to family.

Citizens have repeatedly asked for a citizen input aspect into the hiring, such as a meet and greet with finalists, which is what happened when Brandenburg was hired in 2015.

During a five-minute public comment period last Thursday, citizens were not allowed to comment on the finalists for the jail administrator job.

“My concern is you’re putting public comment on the agenda, but not giving us anything to comment on,” said MariRuth Petzing.

Brian Stovall said he felt the board was patronizing citizens.

Ron Werner Jr., a Lutheran priest who traveled from Portland, was allowed to make a short comment at the end of the comment period, saying over 500 people signed a petition against the jail’s housing of immigrant detainees. He urged the board not to balance its budget on the backs of a vulnerable population.

Amber Orion said she felt the hiring process for the new administrator was rushed. She also wanted to know why the hiring standards were lowered from when Brandenburg was hired. Then, the applicants had to have 10 years of experience and a bachelor’s degree. It was changed this time to five years experience and an associate’s degree.

Brandenburg later said that all 29 applicants for the administrator position had a bachelor’s degree.

Board chair Tom McCoy said he didn’t perceive the process to be rushed, and Wasco County Sheriff Lane Magill said he felt the timeframe was adequate. McCoy also said they weren’t trying to lower standards for the administrator, they just didn’t want to exclude possibly qualified candidates.

While citizens wanted a member of the public on the interview committee, McCoy said he felt the members of the committee — which consisted of jail board members — were well-qualified public officials.

Orion said the board was made up of white males, and was not representative of the public.

She wondered how the public could be part of the process at a time when the jail was under great public scrutiny. Since President Trump was elected, a local group has opposed the jail’s longtime contract to house immigration detainees.

The jail board also authorized purchase of a body scanner, which will eliminate the need for most strip searches and improve safety for both officers and inmates.

Lohrey said three people were hospitalized from the jail in the last year because they’d put contraband in their body cavity and gotten sick.

The jail does not do cavity searches, Brandenburg said.