Sales tax proposed to build new Lafourche jail

Lafourche voters will decide May 3 whether to levy a new 0.2-percent sales tax to finance building and operating a 600-bed jail, with construction estimated to cost between $28-30 million, Sheriff Craig Webre said Friday.

The existing Lafourche Parish Detention Center remains overcrowded and in deplorable condition, with issues concerning inmate welfare, plumbing, air conditioning and other infrastructure. Interrupted at various times by hurricanes and the BP oil spill and their tax swap rejected by parish voters in November, officials have worked toward a solution for nearly a decade.

“We’ve done a lot of due diligence,” Webre said. “We certainly wanted to approach this in a practical, objective way, so that we would have a solid plan we could put forth that would be a defensible plan.”

The Lafourche Parish Law Enforcement district filed the proposition with the Secretary of State prior to yesterday’s (March 18) deadline, an action that does not require parish council approval, Webre said. A committee including sheriff’s office personnel as well as architectural and correctional experts worked together to determine needs and how to fund them, the sheriff added.

Webre said the bed count came from independent expert James Rowenhorst, who in 2009 projected Lafourche would need a 900-bed facility – at an estimated $50 million cost – to keep up with crime trends. In revisiting the issue, the independent expert hacked one-third of the original suggested bed count.

Skipper Holloway, a Thibodaux architect, was also consulted during the fact-finding period, Webre said. Holloway’s firm was the lead architect for the St. Charles Parish Nelson Coleman Correctional Center, from which Holloway based a cost estimate for Lafourche, Webre said. An architectural contract will not be granted until after a funding stream is secure, the sheriff stressed.

Voters last November rejected a parish council proposal to redirect ad valorem revenue – roughly $800,000 annually – away from the parish library system toward a new detention center.

At the time, the parish’s jail consultant Michael LeBlanc, of MWL Architects, suggested the parish build a 540-bed, $25 million jail. LeBlanc said then he based those figures on his own formula. He was also lobbying for the lucrative design contract.

The ACLU Foundation of Louisiana has repeatedly requested the parish conduct a comprehensive needs-assessment study to determine an appropriate bed count, expressing concern that construction of a jail larger than what is needed would inflate the incarceration rate beyond what is necessary. The foundation suggested the parish retain the services of the nationally respected crime guru James Austin.

The existing jail, located in Thibodaux, was built in 1968, expanded in 1977 and has been battling space issues since 1995.

As of Monday, 331 inmates were listed on the detention center’s online roster. Overflow inmates are shipped to facilities out of parish through contracts the council has approved; this comes at a higher cost to the parish. Webre has characterized the parish’s jail population as “artificially low.”

A team of “jail experts” has been studying the existing 244-bed detention center to see if it could be used in some fashion to complement a new facility, Webre said. Their report should be finalized this week, he said.

An architectural report commissioned by a parish committee investigating the jail situation in 2011 said the existing detention center has the structural capacity to be refurbished and expanded, though it did not opine on the feasibility of utilizing existing plumbing and electrical systems or bringing the building into compliance with federal disability regulations.

Webre said the law enforcement district decided to place the referendum on the May ballot so that it is the primary issue facing voters and doesn’t get lost amid congressional, judicial and other parishwide offices during the November ballot.

“We didn’t want to confuse the issue,” Webre said. “We didn’t want to have to try to distinguish this issue from other issues going on, and we didn’t want to lose the momentum of the effort from November.”

Parishwide, a 0.2 percent sales tax would have collected $2.2 million in 2013, according to the parish’s tax-collection records.

“(A sales tax) distributes the cost across the entire spectrum of people who are going to benefit from a safer jail,” Webre said. “Whereas a property tax simply places the burden on the people who own property and the people who own businesses. We philosophically felt it would be a fairer and more palatable form of revenue enhancement if we spread the burden across the people who are going to benefit.”

If it passes, Lafourche consumers would pay between 8.2 (Thibodaux) and 9.4 (Golden Meadow, most of unincorporated south Lafourche) percent on taxable goods, depending on where they make purchases.

Louisiana charges a flat 4-percent sales tax, which the state collects, and local jurisdictions can levy taxes upon themselves. Louisiana’s state rate is moderate compared nationally, but its average local rate (4.89 percent) ranks among the five highest in the nation, boosting Louisiana’s total average rate of 8.89 percent beyond all but Tennessee and Arkansas, according to a 2013 study by the national nonprofit Tax Foundation.

Council Chairman Daniel Lorraine has shelved a plan to formulate a property-tax proposal that would fund construction of a new jail, he said. Lorraine declined to take a stance on the sheriff’s proposal. However, he cautioned that the council has the authority to hike the mostly-parishwide Solid Waste tax as much as 0.3 percent without voter approval; the upper limit would take the south Lafourche rate to 9.7 percent.

“You’re going to run into a problem really soon with garbage, the prices,” Lorraine said. The council created a committee to investigate garbage collection issues last month; it has not yet met.

A new jail would include mental-health and addiction-rehabilitation programs among other efforts to curb recidivism rates, Webre said, but the specifics on what exactly they would entail have not been decided.

Webre is scheduled to discuss the tax proposal at 7:30 a.m., Thursday, during the Thibodaux Chamber of Commerce’s Business at Breakfast. There is no charge to attend for chamber members, but nonmembers are charged a $15 meal fee. To make a reservation, call 985-446-1187.

The election is May 3. The deadline to register to vote is April 2. Early voting runs from April 19-26.

Six months after rejecting a rededication of library revenue, Lafourche voters will be faced with a new 0.2-percent sales tax referendum to fund construction of a new Lafourche Parish Detention Center.

FILE PHOTO