Emails: Sheriff McFadden won’t ask Mecklenburg County for juvenile jail funds
Sheriff Garry McFadden will not put forward a budget request to the county to reopen Charlotte’s former juvenile jail, according to emails between County Manager Mike Bryant and a state official.
McFadden “informed me that he has no intentions of submitting a budget request to reopen the detention center for my consideration,” Bryant wrote in a Feb. 19 email to North Carolina Department of Public Safety Deputy Secretary William Lassiter, who oversees juvenile detention across the state.
The announcement that McFadden would not request the funding came just days after he said his office, Mecklenburg County and the state would work on one together at a press conference.
Reached by phone on Wednesday, the sheriff said the conversation around Jail North was “100% political.”
“Everybody has twisted this story to whatever it is,” McFadden said when asked what had changed since the press conference. “We let it rest.”
That the sheriff would not present a budget left some stakeholders perplexed.
“We are just confused,” said Children’s Alliance Advocacy Director Frank Crawford, who has been part of the conversations about Jail North. “We don’t understand why he stood in a meeting last Monday — and in front of the press in addition to that — and said, ‘I have the keys if you have the money,’ those kinds of comments. Then the next day, he’s saying he has no intention of presenting a budget.”
The sheriff has been in and out of discussions about the jail. He closed it in 2022 to alleviate a staffing shortage at Detention Center Central, which houses adult inmates.
Advocates have said Jail North’s reopening would be good for the county because it would allow charged teenagers to be closer to their families. Jail North had educational and vocational programs, too, and because it was close to the county courthouse, it was easier for defendants to make their court dates.
Some considered it a model facility when it was open.
“Should you be interested in further discussions, I am willing to participate,” Lassiter wrote to Bryant. “However, given your email and the Sheriff’s decision not to present a budget, I will explore other options within the state.”
That will be a new juvenile jail elsewhere in North Carolina, DPS said in an email to The Charlotte Observer.
Bryant declined to comment for this story.
“The county cannot fund this,” McFadden said Wednesday. “Understand: If the county cannot fund it, how am I going to fund it?”
County manager wants NC to fully fund jail
When asked about the emails, DPS provided the full exchange to the Observer.
It began when Crawford, with the Children’s Alliance, and Lassiter, with DPS, reached out to Bryant after the Feb. 16 meeting.
The emails noted McFadden’s suggested budget of about $17 million from that meeting, which Crawford wrote “created discussion and concern in the room” because “the reimbursement rates that the State and Mecklenburg County have in place would not cover that level of expense.”
After the meeting, some of the officials in the room — including McFadden — agreed in front of Charlotte’s press corps to work together more, have a more granular conversation about numbers and find places to compromise.
Lassiter reached out to Bryant to start that conversation, the emails show.
“Before my staff and I invest more time into developing a proposal to present to the Governor and the General Assembly, I am curious if there is a commitment from the County to provide funding for the facility,” he wrote.
Bryant responded that with McFadden’s not wanting to submit a budget, and with the county’s own tight budget, it would be “fiscally irresponsible” to add more big expenses. That would require cutting county services, raising taxes or doing both, Bryant said, and he would not consider any of the three options.
Bryant would only be interested in discussing reopening Jail North further if the state fully funded it, he wrote.
Statutorily, North Carolina counties and the state must split the costs of housing juveniles.
State, sheriff’s office struggle over numbers
While there has been seeming unanimity between local and state officials that Jail North should reopen, the how-to has proven difficult. The two governments would need to come to some agreement to fund and reopen Jail North.
Even before the email exchange between Bryant and Lassiter, when McFadden seemed open to further discussion, Mecklenburg County Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell raised those concerns at the Feb. 16 press conference.
“When you have a state that can’t even pass a budget, it’s very difficult to trust that we can share these funds,” the commissioner said at the time. “This is all going to have to come together. My hope is that where there is a will, there is a way. But I’m not sure we can really bank on that right now.”
Some have questioned whether McFadden’s proposed $17 million or so annually to house 68 juveniles is necessary. That is only about $2 million more than the jail’s budget the last year it operated, the sheriff noted to the Observer Wednesday.
The figure is close to the state’s entire juvenile detention budget, which DPS spokesperson Matt Debnam said is $25 million for 453 beds.
“Fully funding the estimated operating costs presented by the MCSO would require DJJDP to pay Mecklenburg County more than double the per diem rate that is paid to other county-operated facilities,” Debnam said in an email.
McFadden implored a reporter on Wednesday to look into a supposed $430 million that he said DPS had available. Asked about the figure, DPS did not recognize it.
The Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention “has requested approximately $40 million in non-recurring funds from the General Assembly to build a new detention center,” Debnam said. “I don’t know where the $430 million figure is coming from.”
McFadden is in his third run for sheriff against three other candidates. Jail North has become a big issue in the campaign.
Ryan Oehrli covers criminal justice in the Charlotte region for The Charlotte Observer. His work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The Observer maintains full editorial control of its journalism.