(The Center Square) – Despite sitting $13 million in the red, the Spokane City Council voted Monday to backfill the fund that pays for its jail bills after having diverted more than $6 million for homelessness.
The city of Spokane initially established the Criminal Justice Assistance Fund to pay for its monthly jail bills from Spokane County. The account was largely stable until the pandemic, when the state allowed the city to dip into that money for other criminal justice expenses, including homelessness services.
Original reporting by The Center Square revealed that Spokane has drained the CJA fund over the last five years. City officials diverted roughly half of the balance in that account for homelessness services in 2022 and 2023, and now it’s insolvent as the city faces a $13 million general fund deficit in 2026.
“We had a surplus at the time,” Councilmember Michael Cathcart said Monday, acknowledging his prior votes to divert funding. “My problem with the proposed solution — we do need to correct it, don’t get me wrong — but the proposed solution essentially takes the dollars from the base wages of police.”
Cathcart and Councilmember Jonathan Bingle both voted against the proposal to backfill the CJA fund with $2 million from the general fund. The rest of the council pushed it through, with Councilmembers Kitty Klitzke and Paul Dillon citing the use of interfund transfers to mitigate the ongoing budget crisis.
While the city faces a $13 million budget deficit next year, the council had balanced a $25 million gap heading into 2025. Nearly every corner of the local government felt the impact in one way or another, so Cathcart and Bingle warned against actions that might further compromise public safety staffing.
Bingle said the Spokane Police Department is dozens of officers short of what the city has authorized.
That’s largely due to ongoing recruiting issues felt by much of the state, but Bingle argued that if the city is going to spend that money, it should be on addressing SPD’s capital needs. He suggested that SPD install holding cells at some of its precincts to expand capacity until the region builds a new jail.
The lack of capacity has been an ongoing issue for Spokane County Detention Services, but there have been dozens of empty jail beds for several weeks. Spokane County Spokesperson Pat Bell said staffing plays a hand in the jail entering a red-light status, and that the officials are monitoring the situation.
“When you see that significant step in the last two years in our jail costs, which is happening, I think the stronger reason for that isn’t that the county is increasing its costs,” Bingle said. “I think there are unintended consequences of policy passed at the state level, and this is something that’s affecting us.”
He was referencing fallout from the Washington Supreme Court’s 2021 Blake decision, which declared the state’s felony drug possession statute unconstitutional. Now it’s a gross misdemeanor instead of a felony, which the state requires the county to pay for even if the person was arrested within city limits.
While the city now faces much of the cost associated with those cases, reporting by The Center Square shows that county taxpayers already foot the bill for nearly 2,500 felony offenders arrested in the city.
The city and county’s contract over their shared jail costs has been automatically renewing since 2011.
“The community is asking for more arrests, for people to be held accountable,” Council President Betsy Wilkerson said, recognizing the dilemma. “We’re not in charge of those costs; we owe them money. I think for their budgeting purposes, as well as the reciprocity of collaboration, we need to look at that.”
