Sacramento jail’s new annex could cost nearly $1 billion. Here’s why the price has gone up

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve spending close to $1 billion for a new intake and mental health annex at the Main Jail downtown. An attorney for the county advised the board that the expensive construction project was the only option to address a consent decree and improve conditions at the jail because staff had not come up with a “Plan B.”

Dozens of members of the public spent over an hour and a half pleading with the board not to move forward with the new annex.

Voting against the resolution, Supervisor Patrick Kennedy said, “I don’t think our pencil’s sharp enough. ... Do I think a facility is necessary? Yes, but I’m not here yet. The price tag is just too much for me to swallow.”

Building costs alone for the project have ballooned by $200 million since supervisors first approved the expansion in December.

At that time, the projected construction cost was $450 million. Eight months later, more than $50 million of new construction outlays plus “soft costs” such as permitting fees and furniture that were not included in the original estimate have brought the total to $654 million.

The spending approved Tuesday amounted to $925 million in bond debt, partly to account for even higher expenditures. While the supervisors approved the increased spending, the board has yet to authorize the county to issue the 30-year bonds.

Yet the new total represents a huge sum for the county, whose total annual budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year is $8.4 billion.

“The consent decree itself doesn’t say ‘thou shalt build’ anything,” said Supervisor Phil Serna, who voted no. “The debt service is something that taxpayers and future boards and Sacramento County residents that aren’t even born yet are going to be strapped with.”

The stated purpose of the new annex is to address the Mays Consent Decree, entered into in 2019. It requires the county to improve conditions at the two jail facilities run by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office though, as Serna noted, it does not expressly require the construction of this new facility.

While critics of the resolution who spoke at Tuesday’s board meeting proposed a suite of alternatives, including a significant reduction in the jail population, county staff’s recommended moving forward with the plan.

“If the board doesn’t proceed with the staff recommendations, what I think happens is we get a letter (from the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the Mays case), probably by the end of the week, notifying us, ‘Where’s Plan B?’” said county counsel Rick Heyer. “And I don’t know that we would have a Plan B at this point.”

Liz Blum, a co-founder of Decarcerate Sacramento, begged the board to at least “make sure you fully understand all alternatives, all options.” She pointed to the consent decree’s emphasis on jail population reduction, which attorneys for the plaintiffs have repeatedly reaffirmed. Others who spoke before the board emphasized transformative programs and projects the county could undertake with even a fraction of the money the board ultimately approved for the annex.

The resolution passed Tuesday does not require the county to spend close to $1 billion on the project, but it gives officials the option to do so. According to a timeline presented to the board, construction would begin in 2026. The annex would not open before 2028.

Supervisors Rich Desmond, Sue Frost and Pat Hume voted for it, all saying they hated to do so.

Serna, whose district covers northwestern parts of the county and much of the city of Sacramento, voted against the mental health annex in December and again this summer. Kennedy, whose district covers south Sacramento and adjacent unincorporated areas including Vineyard, voted for it in December but against it Tuesday.

“I freely admit there is clearly a need for improved conditions in our jail, improved availability of resources for mental health treatment in our jail system,” Serna said from the dais. “But when it’s approaching the numbers that it is at this point, I feel more strongly than I did back in December, that I don’t want to necessarily look back and say that, for different reasons, that I was boxed in, and I had no other choice.

“We all know what animals do in a corner.”

Why fund a mental health annex at the jail?

In 2019, the county entered into the Mays Consent Decree as part of a class action lawsuit filed by incarcerated people represented by lawyers from Disability Rights California, the Prison Law Office and Cooley LLP.

The suit alleged inhumane and unconstitutional conditions at the Main Jail and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center near Elk Grove. The lead plaintiff in the case, Lorenzo Mays, spent eight years in solitary confinement awaiting trial, experiencing deepening depression, hallucinations and, with a lack of sunlight, a vitamin D deficiency.

As part of the decree, if conditions do not improve, the court could appoint a receiver to make decisions for the county to bring the jails into compliance.

One speaker at the meeting pointed out that the voices of inmates themselves appeared to be missing from Tuesday’s deliberations.

“Persons who are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, like myself, we are also constituents,” said Marjorie Beazer, a mother and a jail reform consultant who spent two years in Sacramento County jails. “Are we having these conversations with the inmates currently, and those who are former inmates, yes or no? Who is better to speak to my pain points? ... When you have not walked a mile in my shoes, you can’t speak for me. What you will do is speak to me, you will speak about me.”

She also pointed out the racial implications of the move. On the day of the board’s deliberations, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office reported that 1,269 people incarcerated in the jails were Black, 39% of the jails’ population. That contrasts with U.S. Census Bureau figures that Black people make up just 11% of county residents. Beazer, who is Black, noted that the officials and contractors discussing the jail expansion all appeared to be white.

“When I look at the people ... sitting inside (the jails) whose voices cannot be heard here today, they look like me. And the people standing there talking about multi-billion dollar building,” she said, “don’t.”