The La Plata County commissioners on Tuesday formally lobbed the ball over to the city of Durango when commissioners unanimously voted to terminate the county’s agreement with the city to house in county jail prisoners facing lower level municipal charges.
Attorneys for the two governments now face a Dec. 26 deadline, the date on which the termination is effective, to negotiate a mutually acceptable intergovernmental agreement.
The IGA does not apply to people arrested in Durango city limits under state statute, which covers most serious offenses, but only to those facing relatively low-level charges addressed in municipal court.
The move punctuates a monthslong standoff between the two governments which began Aug. 1 when La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith informed Durango Police Chief Brice Current that he would stop accepting municipal inmates because of capacity issues.
Although that decision was never acted upon – the jail population dropped before it was necessary – the discourse led the county to pursue a new IGA with the city, per direction from the Board of County Commissioners in September.
The BOCC’s vote Tuesday to approve a letter informing the city of the termination signaled that the county is serious about reaching a new agreement that will take effect in 2025.
The current IGA, signed in 1994 and left unamended since 1996, required La Plata County to either provide notice of termination no later than Nov. 30, or be contractually beholden to the terms of the automatically renewing agreement through 2025.
Commissioners voted after a brief executive session in which they discussed whether it was possible to offer a notice period longer than the 30 days suggested by staff. However, the board voted swiftly after the confidential discussion to approve the letter as written.
County Manager Chuck Stevens sent the city manager a draft of a proposed IGA on Oct. 17. City Attorney Mark Morgan responded to the county last week in an email saying the city generally found the draft unacceptable, said Kathleen Moore, an attorney for the county.
The current IGA leaves the county financially vulnerable to certain costs associated with other jurisdictions’ inmates and “no longer services the best interests of the county,” Stevens said.
Morgan told the BOCC on Tuesday that the 11-page draft contract provided by the county attorney’s office is “so one-sided, we just can’t agree to it.”
“I will get you a redline version, but it’s going to have a lot of red lines in it,” he said.
Among the contentious provisions in the proposed contract is a clause saying the jail may deny a city prisoner who “currently exhibits problematic behavior.”
“That’s his job,” Morgan said of Smith in an interview. “People who can’t be in society because they’re causing disruption go to jail.”
Morgan also objected to, among other provisions, the way a day of jail use is calculated. As proposed, the city would pay for two full days of bed space for a municipal prisoner who arrives at 11 p.m. one day and leaves 7 a.m. the next with no prorating for partial days.
In short, he said the draft indicates a posture that the county does not want to do business with the city.
That is not the case, Smith said.
“There’s not an intent to not house city of Durango inmates,” he said. “We’re strictly trying to make sure that we have our liability covered and that we have tools necessary to manage the population when we get to that point.”
Smith also pointed out that the proposed IGA is similar to agreements struck in the past with other governments. However, Morgan has not seen those similar agreements as a result of the specifically worded nature of a records request he filed.
Should the jail stop accepting inmates held on municipal charges, the expectations of what would happen vary depending on which law enforcement agency is asked.
Durango officials insist it would disrupt a functional and critical component of the justice system that keeps people out of higher level courts.
La Plata County officials say there would be no compromise to public safety.
Matt Margeson, the judge who presides over Durango’s recently revamped municipal court, told the BOCC that it is generally only low-level offenders who repeatedly refuse to show up in court who end up in jail on municipal charges.
“The court has to have an effective enforcement mechanism,” he said.
Smith insists that state statues under which his deputies operate outside Durango’s city limits are sufficient to mitigate any public safety risk.
“If there is a public safety risk and a crime has been committed, we can usually find a statute that applies, and if that person needs to go to jail for that scenario, they can be brought to jail,” he said.
Durango Police Chief Current disagrees.
He said in an interview with The Durango Herald that even if a low-level offense – illegal camping, having an open container of alcohol in public or something of a similar nature – can be charged under state statute, the higher level charge is not always the most beneficial to the community.
“We’re able to handle things at the level they need to be handled at,” Current said.
Although the city could build its own detention facility for municipal inmates, county officials say it is not their intention to bar the city from using the jail, and city officials say they have little interest in such an expenditure when a far more convenient option is available.
That leaves a looming Dec. 26 deadline for the two governments.
“I am confident that in the short amount of time here we can get an agreement,” Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton said from the dais.
Morgan said Tuesday he would return a redline edited version of the IGA – heavy on the red – to the county that day.
Commissioner Matt Salka said he will work to ensure the county attorney’s office acts quickly in response.
“I will make sure that this is a priority, because we want to make sure that we’re all covered here,” he said.
However, the two governments appear to have drastically different visions of what the final product will look like. And if the attorneys can’t agree on a draft to recommend to their respected elected bosses?
“That leaves the politicians to work it out,” Morgan said.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
