A Jeffersonian In East Texas

In a thinly veiled attempt to push the Smith county jail bond, the Tyler paper has once again presented us with a course on how not to be balanced in reporting! If it was an attempt to be balanced, it failed miserably! Just more of the same mainstream media madness, that we have come to expect on this issue.

The title is of interest however: “Smith County Jail Bond: What Are We Paying For?” It is a good question! Well, here is the real answer:

• We are paying for a lawyer to fight against us while representing the interests of a small group of political elitists in our county.

• We are paying the salaries of a small group of political elitists in our county who want to keep information from us on an issue that we are expected to cast ballots on in a few days.
• We paid their salaries while they held secret meetings in violation of the states open meeting act.
• We are paying for jail overcrowding which they themselves could have prevented if they had really wanted to.
• We are paying the costs of the Attorney General spending time fighting them against us.

Smith County 2008 Jail Proposal Facts

The following list is a list of facts concerning the Smith county jail proposal.

• Commissioners decided to build a jail and offer two separate proposals on the same ballot. Both were soundly defeated.

• A third proposal was put before the public a year later, and is defeated even more soundly.

• A fourth proposal for an expandable version of the same facility is placed on the ballot for November 2008.

• During all of this time, the public has been told that the cost of housing an inmate in another county is a certain amount, when in fact, the amount only exceeded the cost of housing them in the current Smith county facility by a very small amount.

• The figures for projected needs are so skewed as to be unintelligible. We have been given two differing sets.

• In the years following the initial proposals, alternative programs have been so successful that a continuation of such programs will undoubtedly reduce the jails population to levels lower than the ordered mandate.

• Commissioners have stopped funding one such program, before it had time to succeed.

• Other programs of this type have been suggested, but not funded.

• The need for additional courts, to speed up the terminally slow pretrial process has been ignored.

• A state law allowing for ticketing for minor offenses has been systematically ignored.

• The cost to build such a facility will far exceed the cost presented to the public.

• The cost to run the facility will be an albatross around the collective necks of Smith citizens far into the future.

• These combined costs will exceed the current cost of shipping detainees to other counties far into the future.

• Building the jail will not solve the underlying problems.