In many ways, the two candidates for Cuyahoga County executive agree on what they’d do about the decrepit county jail.
Republican Lee Weingart and Democrat Chris Ronayne want to scale the project back. They agree that building a campus-style, 2400 bed facility on the county’s most recent preferred site outside Downtown Cleveland at a cost of $750 million is a mistake.
Both want to scale the project back by reducing the number of inmates in the jail, necessitating fewer beds.
Weingart argues that the county could bring down capacity if judges worked faster to move people through the trial process. According to a recent study by the consulting firm DLZ, the average stay at Cuyahoga County jail last year was 204 days. That’s up only slightly from the pre-pandemic average of 184 days.
“Our jail problem is actually a judge problem,” Weingart said. “Our judges are not moving their dockets fast enough.”
Weingart’s plan would reduce the number of beds from the 2,400 proposed in the county’s plan, and the 1,880 at the current facility, to about 1,300.
Ronayne also wants to bring down the population to reduce the size of the project.
He proposes working faster on reforms like centralized booking, changes to the cash bail system and increased use of the diversion center and other treatment options.
“I think to build something bigger is akin to loosening our belt to deal with obesity,” Ronayne said. “We ought to discipline ourselves to not overbuild, otherwise it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and we just fill it.”
Both candidates want to make changes to the planning process that led to the most recent plan.
For Ronayne, that means scrapping the Justice Center Executive Steering Committee, which for the past three years oversaw the process that led to the $750 million new jail plan, and starting a new process.
He cited the county’s ability to get the jail population down by around 1,000 people during the pandemic as proof that progress can happen quickly.
“We need to again act like we did during pandemic, where actually the jail population was smaller, but we were working more together,” Ronayne said. “That's my M.O. going forward in the future - working with our cities, working with the state of Ohio, to get this right.”
There were special measures put in place to get that population reduction during the pandemic, like weekend bail hearings and a pause on detaining people for many types of probation violations. The sheriff also refused to accept people at the jail if they were arrested on misdemeanor charges.
It’s unclear whether those measures can be put back in place or extended post-pandemic.
Weingart would reinstitute a steering committee as a way to work with the courts, prosecutors and public defender’s office on a new plan.
He would replace the consultant hired by the county to work with the steering committee.
“They choose the same consultant for every project they do, whether it be the jail, the Medical Mart, the Convention Center, Hilton Hotel,” Weingart said, referring to Jeffrey Appelbaum of Project Management Consultants. “Same guy. Every time. He always recommends a project that's too big, too expensive, that the county can't afford.”
Both candidates also agree that the jail should remain connected to the courthouse building. The steering committee had agreed to build a new jail outside Downtown Cleveland, while keeping the courts somewhere in downtown.
According to Weingart, one of the steering committee’s mistakes was deciding the jail needed to be built as a low-rise building, requiring a large piece of land to build on.
“They got in their minds that they wanted to build a jail on 40 acres of land, that's contaminated, and they wanted to make sure it was at least 2,400 in capacity, which is considerably higher than the current capacity of about 1,800,” Weingart said.
The rationale behind building a low-rise building is it would make it possible to improve the environment with more natural light and open common areas. A tower, like the current one, is more difficult to maintain because accessing the plumbing, electrical wiring and HVAC system is challenging in a high-rise jail.
Ronayne said the jail should be connected to the courthouse because separating them makes it difficult for court personnel and people held at the jails.
“To me, it's inefficient to separate the two, at a cost, and potentially even at a security risk for us,” Ronayne said.
There are two jail buildings at the Justice Center in Downtown Cleveland – Jail I and Jail II. Jail I is older and both agree it needs to be torn down. Jail II, they argue, can be renovated to handle some of the population.
Weingart estimates a renovated Jail II can hold 650 beds. He would build a second facility at the county-owned site of the old Juvenile Detention Center. Under his proposal, another 650 beds could be made available there.
“I think between renovating Jail II, which would be about $75-to-$100 million, and building a new jail, what I'm calling Jail III, at about $350 million, we'd be talking substantially lower costs to solve the jail problem,” Weingart said.
Ronayne agrees Jail II could be renovated and used. He wants the county to consider using existing jails in Euclid or Bedford Heights to hold some detainees.
“I want to stress that this is a system,” Ronayne said. “We've got to think about this as a justice system, not just a jail.”
He didn’t quote a price but was skeptical about the $750 million the consultant estimated for the proposed new jail.
That number was originally closer to $400 million when the steering committee first voted to build a new jail. It went up to $550 million as the planning progressed and, right as the steering committee and county council were about to vote on purchasing the site near Downtown Cleveland for the new jail, it ballooned to $750 million.
“Building costs, interest rates, cost of construction doesn't necessarily spike by double in that one-year period,” Ronayne said. “We've got to really roll up our sleeves and look at what we're doing for those who are in our custody, those who work there, but also as we relate it the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County.”
