By Franny White
Tri-City Herald
Benton County commissioners voted 2-1 on Monday to send a proposed 0.2 percent criminal justice sales tax to the voters in November amidst tense exchanges between the lone dissenter, Commissioner Claude Oliver, and other county leaders.
Sheriff Larry Taylor and Prosecutor Andy Miller introduced the proposal, which would pay for new officers for all of the county’s city police departments and increase staff for the sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices. It also would help create a Mental Health Court and expand inmate services.
The proposed tax is projected to collect $5,075,350 in 2009. Last November, 53 percent of the voters rejected the 0.2 percent increase.
Kennewick Police Chief Ken Hohenberg said he supported the tax because although area agencies have driven down overall crime rates, there’s more violent crime.
“It costs money; it’s expensive,” Hohenberg said. “This is an issue that’s going to continue to draw more and more resources from the cities and the county.”
Oliver, citing his own proposal to improve mental health care at the county jail, said he wanted to table a vote on the tax resolution.
“This is a viable plan,” Miller responded. “This plan needs to move forward without any stalling and without any hostage taking.”
Commissioners Max Benitz Jr. and Leo Bowman overrode Oliver.
Oliver then set out his own proposal to use money from existing budgets to pay for mental health care in the jail. He wanted to tap $200,000 from a 0.1 percent criminal justice tax that voters approved in 1995 to pay for the Benton County Juvenile Justice Center expansion. He also wanted to use $282,550 from Benton Franklin Human Services and the Benton County Inmate Benevolence Fund.
Oliver said after the meeting that he wanted to fund chemical dependency treatment, psychiatric medicine and mental health care for inmates with those funds. Sheriff Taylor’s proposed criminal justice sales tax would earmark $136,000 for creating a mental health court and $274,794 for inmates’ mental health treatment.
Lt. Cathy Daniel, an administrative officer at the jail, said the jail can offer psychiatric drugs to mentally ill inmates only if they had been prescribed those drugs before being jailed.
Daniel said she supported the sheriff’s proposal because it offers a variety of inmate services.
“If you funnel all the money into mental health and ignore all those other programs, ... I think you’re making a mistake,” she said.
Bowman said he felt “compassion” for inmates’ mental health needs but needed a more specific plan from Oliver.
An aggravated Benitz said the county already had begun to address local mental health issues by supporting the concept of a consolidated crisis response center with Franklin County.
Taylor questioned why Oliver hadn’t discussed his proposal with the sheriff’s office beforehand. Oliver responded that Taylor and Miller had “put the public out of the process” by having Benitz and Bowman vote Monday instead of later.
Taylor quickly responded, “That’s not true, Claude.” Miller said he and Taylor were hosts of a series of town hall meetings last year before the previous vote.
“We have bent over backward to get public input,” Miller said.
The commissioners took no formal action on Oliver’s proposal.
Copyrgiht 2008 Tri-City Herald