By Johnny Edwards
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Threatened with incarceration if they don’t make a deal soon to buy Atlanta’s jail, Fulton County commissioners on Wednesday refused to be pressured and rejected an offer more than double the city’s initial asking price.
Voting unanimously, the County Commission refused to pay $85 million for the city jail --- up from $40 million, the approved sales price from 16 months earlier --- and also turned down a second option to lease up to 750 beds in the facility at $103 per bed per night. Fulton has faced overcrowding issues at its county jail, leading to a 2004 lawsuit and corresponding federal order to improve conditions.
That did not placate U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob, who gave Fulton commissioners 60 days to enter into a binding contract with the city or risk being sent to the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta on contempt charges. On Wednesday, Shoob said he was now mulling action against the city for complicating the deal. While city officials weren’t parties to the 2004 lawsuit and can’t be held in contempt, Shoob said he had other means to penalize them.
“If the deal doesn’t go through, I’m not allowing any more people arrested in Atlanta taken into the county jail,” Shoob said. “We’re filled up. We’ll just say that you have to take them to the city jail. That’ll solve our problem.”
The judge said he thought a deal for $40 million was made two weeks ago in a meeting in his chambers, attended by county and city representatives, the latter including Atlanta COO Peter Aman.
“That wasn’t the understanding that was conveyed to me at all,” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said. “No one in that meeting had authorization to bind me into a sale.”
Wednesday’s county meeting was the first since Shoob made the jail threat. Most commissioners confined their talk on the jail issue to a closed executive session. Others said they were stopped cold by the heftier city jail price tag.
“I think it’s hard to believe that it would have increased by $45 million in one year,” Commissioner Liz Hausmann said. “Most property has decreased in value.”
In explaining the price hike, city officials said they now are asking for market value, whereas the $40 million offer in 2010 came in the face of a $48 million budget shortfall.
“We had a gun to our head,” City Councilman Lamar Willis said. “We were trying to figure out how to make it through that budget crunch. Now, the shoe’s on the other foot, and they have a gun to their heads with a federal judge threatening to put them in jail.”
The city’s finances since have improved and jail operating costs have gone from $28 million per year to $24 million.
Reed expressed surprise that the county rejected the latest offer.
The county needs extra space to come into compliance with a federal order stemming from the 2004 lawsuit, which documented filthy conditions and overcrowding at the county jail on Rice Street.
Copyright 2011 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution