Jail bail

By Hannah Wever
Review Staff Writer

Published: November 6, 2008

The Central Virginia Regional Jail (CVRJ) is filling up and the participating counties are trying to figure out how to pay for expansion. County officials in Orange, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Madison are contemplating the formation of a Central Virginia Regional Jail Authority to operate the facility and to secure expansion funding through bonds.
The plan for making more room for inmates at the jail includes expanding current facilities to accommodate as many as 2,000 additional beds. The preliminary estimate for the project’s capital cost is $10 million.
Prisoners housed for federal offenses have offset the costs of housing locally charged criminals. But now, the equation has changed and there is no longer enough room at the CVRJ to house enough federally charged criminals to pay expenses for the five counties the jail serves.
“The jail needs to expand. The five counties have not needed to pay for housing their prisoners for quite a few years,“ District 5 Supervisor Lee Frame said. “As our populations have grown, so have our jail populations,“ Frame said.
By creating the CVRJ Authority, participating counties would divest all powers, rights obligations and duties of the existing jail board; the authority would, in turn, assume all power and authority.
Additionally, the jail authority would have the ability to issue its own bonds. And, Frame explained, “Those bonds don’t go against the accounts of the counties.“
The formation of a jail authority could help counties overcome another roadblock. Currently, there is a state-issued moratorium on prison-building. By putting a stop to additional or new construction at Virginia’s jails, less money is coming out of state coffers, Frame explained. The reason legislators enacted the moratorium is because Virginia law requires the state to reimburse localities for a percentage of the cost of building or expanding prisons-and the state, suffering from effects of a global economic disaster, is feeling miserly at the moment.
But if CVRJ’s participating jurisdictions can secure a waiver on the moratorium, the jail expansion can go ahead as planned, and the state will reimburse just about half of what each of the five counties spend, Frame said. The reimbursement could be expected only after construction is finished, and that will be after the economy has begun to rebound, he added.
Once the CVRJ authority has been created, Frame said, the county’s ownership of the facility will be transferred to the authority. After that happens, the jail will be run as an independent entity by a board of directors.
Each of the participating counties would have two representatives on the CVRJ Authority Board of Directors, and one of those representatives would be the county’s sheriff. The authority would assume all powers, rights, obligations and duties of the existing regional jail board. In many ways, Frame explained, the facility would operate much like it currently does.
“I doubt there’s very much different between what the jail board is today and what it would be,“ Frame said. “There are certain things [the jail board] could decide,“ he explained, like allocation of costs and policy-making.
Supervisors are still considering the resolution that would transfer power to a jail authority, District 4 Supervisor Teri Pace explained.
“We have to make sure we don’t get taken advantage of,“ Pace said. “We have to make sure there would not be benefits to other counties that could hurt our county.“
Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Mark Johnson said officials are weighing the pros and cons of creating a jail authority.
“I’m keeping an open mind on it,“ Johnson said. “I want to get as many facts as I can. We just need to be really careful if we do this.“
Supervisors will hold a public hearing at their Nov. 23 meeting.