Unexpected state budget cuts are likely to significantly impede Multnomah County's ability to keep people out of prison.
At its Thursday board meeting, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners approved sweeping budget cuts that will result in fewer county jail beds, layoffs in both the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) and the Department of Community Justice (DCJ), and fewer services to help people stay out of prison and keep from reoffending. County commissioners said the $5.4 million in cuts, called “incredibly painful” by Commissioner Lori Stegmann, were necessary because the county received less funding in the 2020-21 Oregon state budget than expected.
“At the end of the day, we know what these cuts are going to mean,” said County Chair Deborah Kafoury at Thursday’s meeting. “Less supervision, fewer services, more people going to prison who would otherwise have the chance to turn their lives around, and the loss of valuable county employees.”
Among the cuts made Thursday: 19 DCJ employees, including parole officers and counselors; a 73-bed jail dorm (the county jail currently has a capacity of about 1,200, and already struggles with overcrowding); and seven MCSO positions.
“This is an extremely difficult, impactful cut to our corrections system countywide,” said Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese at a Tuesday briefing on the cuts.
The county’s Justice Reinvestment Program will also be affected by the cuts. The program allows people to leave jail or prison early, and provides them with supportive services like housing and mentoring, which make it easier to not reoffend. It currently serves about 1,100 people a year; that number will soon drop to 900.
“These are very painful decisions that we have to make,” said Erika Preuitt, the interim director of DCJ, in an interview with the Mercury. “We wish we had all the resources, but we’re in a time where we do have to make cuts.”
The cuts will cut one DCJ program altogether: The Change Center, which teaches people in the criminal justice system cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to help them make healthier choices.
“[The Change Center support groups] focus on their thinking distortions and really give them new ways to think,” Preuitt said. “So that when they’re in the community, they are making different decisions and changing their thinking and actions into a more positive approach.”
The Change Center recently saw a major reduction in referrals: About a thousand people were referred during a four-month period in 2013, versus just 138 people during that same span of time in 2018. That drop in participation came as the DCJ was working to make the Change Center’s support groups and curriculum more consistent and evidence-based, Preuitt said. But, since a comparatively small number of people were using it, cutting it made the most sense to DCJ.
When the county passed its annual budget back in May, it wasn’t expecting to have to make such drastic cuts a few months later. In fact, the budget was based on the projection that funding for criminal justice programs would increase, rather than decrease, in the state’s new biannual budget.
That expectation was based on a 2018 cost study of how much money is required for the daily supervision of each person in Oregon’s criminal justice system. That study—which is called for every six years by Oregon law—put the current cost per person at about $14 a day, a $3 increase from the last cost study.
But the Oregon State Legislature didn’t provide funding that matched the need laid out in the cost study. County leaders point to the generally chaotic nature of the 2019 legislative session and the death of Sen. Jackie Winters, a longtime champion of criminal justice reform, as reasons for the oversight.
Adding insult to injury, Multnomah County also received a smaller piece of the state funding pie this year because its share of incarcerated individuals is smaller than in previous years. In other words: Because the county has been successful in reducing its number of imprisoned and paroled people—a goal of both the Justice Reinvestment Program and the Change Center—it now has less funding for the programs that brought about that success in the first place.
In addition to approving the budget cuts on Thursday, the Board of Commissioners also passed an amendment that will use county contingency funds to keep those 73 threatened jail beds open until March 15, 2020.
“I believe that it would be irresponsible at this time for us to close a jail dorm immediately,” said Kafoury, who introduced the amendment.
That amendment leaves open the possibility that the county won’t have to close a jail dorm at all, if it receives additional funding in the 2020 legislative session.
There’s reason to believe that could happen. Jeston Black, the county’s director of government relations, told the Mercury that because the recent Oregon revenue forecast is positive, the county should have some leverage to convince state lawmakers to provide funding based on the 2018 cost study. That request will need to go through the Oregon Emergency Board, a group of legislators that has the power to allocate state general funds outside of the biannual budgeting process.
“They have the money to do this,” Black said. “So they should do it.”
Because Oregon's state budget is completed every two years, these cuts could bleed into the county's 2021 budget as well. That means that if the county fails to secure more funding next year, it will be faced with more difficult decisions.
"We will be back doing this again unless we can convince them that they made the wrong decision this time," Kafoury said at Thursday's meeting. "The only light at the end of the tunnel we have is the [2020 legislative] session coming up."
