I hope Lawrence Countians realize the terrible position a few of our elected officials have placed us in regarding the jail.

The county lost its only viable option to solve its jail crisis on May 8
for failure to pay the outstanding utility bills on the ORV building that the county had under lease.

There are zero plans for solving the county jail issue at this point with the ORV off the table. Despite every county commissioner promising to fix the jail crisis, only one put a plan forth and worked for it, DeAnna Holliday.

So, moving forward, Lawrence County is now at the mercy of the state of Ohio with the jail issue in regard to the permitted population in the current county jail and in allowing the county to pay the state or managing entity of what will become a regional jail at the ORV building the county had under lease for 15 years at $1 a year. That’s correct. Lawrence County’s best-case scenario is now for the state to allow the county to pay to house its prisoners in the very same building the county had under lease until May 7, 2017.

What is coincidental is the county will be stiffing the state of Ohio with the unpaid utility bill at the ORV as a result of the commission voting 2-1 not to pay the bill. Mrs. Holliday is the only commissioner who voted to pay the bill. I wish I had the ability to not pay bills I don’t want to pay. I wonder if the two commissioners who voted not to pay the bill will also allow me to skip paying my county property taxes in 2018. It’s bad business to not pay a bill to your primary funding source.

The county’s current jail population, based on the statements of the commission, is likely to be further reduced to 27. The current Lawrence County Jail is permitted to house 52 inmates.

So, as it stands now, the county is likely to see its costs in transporting and housing prisoners in out-of-county jails double to well over $2 million a year in money leaving our county. That number only grows when considering the county lost the revenue stream that would have been created by housing prisoners from other counties in the ORV, and the tax revenue the county would have received from the employees at the ORV paying taxes to Lawrence County since the property had been annexed into Lawrence County.

So Bill Pratt, Jason Stephens and Jeff Lawless — you got your way. Now what will you do to solve the county’s jail crisis ?

J.T. Holt
Lawrence County resident