County Commissioner Tries Again to Create Jail Sales Tax

OKLAHOMA CITY — A second attempt to create a sales tax to cover Oklahoma County’s growing funding deficit for the jail failed last week.
This time it was Oklahoma County District 3 interim Commissioner Paul Foster who proposed the sales tax; in January, District 1 Commissioner Jason Lowe had made a similar proposal, which also failed to advance.
Commissioners may try again to get a county sales tax on the ballot in November.
Foster, the newest member of the three-member commission who is serving the remainder of former District 3 Commissioner Myles Davidson’s term (Davidson resigned in March amid accusations of sexual harassment), proposed a half-cent sales tax at the Oklahoma County Commissioners’ meeting on June 24.
Foster’s proposal would have provided debt service on construction of the new jail and money for its operations, as well as provide money for the sheriff’s office, EMS services, and road and bridge maintenance.
Voters approved a $260 million bond in 2022 to pay for building a new jail, but since then the estimated cost of building the facility – which still has not broken ground – has ballooned to more than $800 million.
The current jail has for years been plagued with operational and structural deficiencies. The county created a jail trust in 2019 tasked with overseeing the facility, removing that responsibility from the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office. Yet, dangerous and unsanitary conditions and overcrowding have continued under the jail trust’s management.
“I’ve sat in meetings and listened to people irresponsibly call it the deadliest jail in America,” Foster said of the Oklahoma County jail during last week’s meeting, explaining why he proposed a new sales tax. “I also know about the different sites that were evaluated for the new jail to determine the right location at the lowest possible cost. And I realize the cost of construction has skyrocketed since COVID and continues to go up every year. We’ve all looked at different ways to raise revenue for the construction of the new jail. We’ve waited in hopes of getting some assistance from particular legislation that ultimately failed. Now we’re again at the point where we need to address a sales tax.”
Oklahoma County is the only county in the state that does not have a sales tax to support jail operations, Foster noted. A sales tax would provide funding not just from Oklahoma County residents but from people who live outside of the county and buy things in Oklahoma County, he noted.
“I know tax is a dirty word in this state, but Oklahoma has the ninth lowest total tax burden in the country,” Foster said.
Just as happened in January when Lowe proposed a 5/8 cent county sales tax, a crowd of Oklahoma County residents signed up to speak at the meeting in opposition to the proposal.
“Fifty cents doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but we failed to raise the minimum wage, and that fifty cents hurts a lot,” said resident Lisa Powell. The proposed county sales tax would be an “additional tax on our people who are already drowning. I know the county needs money but maybe if we looked at the money that’s being thrown around here that doesn’t benefit citizens … we might be able to carve out a few dollars…Only the elite is funded for everything at the expense of the people.”
Neither of Foster’s fellow commissioners – Lowe and District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan – moved to second Foster’s motion, causing the motion to die before it even went up for a vote.
Maughn said the proposal was not made it time to put the sales tax question on the ballot for the runoff election in August, as Foster proposed.
“Given it’s an election year, it has to be posted 75 days in advance – June 10th would have been the last day for us to do that,” said Maughan during the meeting. Foster said it was his understanding that the motion could be made 60 days before the election.
Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney Lisa Enders said the language proposed for the measure was problematic, and officials did not have enough time to resolve the issues in time to make the August election.
Lowe said there were too many problems with the proposal and not enough time to fix them.
“And I haven’t met — well, my office hasn’t met — with bond counsel, and we haven’t discussed this matter with the District Attorney’s Office. So with that, I’m going to be a ‘No.’”