A PUBLIC-SAFETY FIX -- ABOUT TIME

County Should Protect Public, Reduce Recidivism By Keeping Jail,
Drug-Alcohol Treatment Promises

Three years after Multnomah County officials told the public how
desperately a new jail and secure drug- and alcohol-treatment beds
were needed, the Board of Commissioners and sheriff finally appear
ready to act.

The agreement reached Tuesday between the commissioners and Sheriff
Dan Noelle about site, security and operations is still tentative.

It shouldn't be.

This deal is just about where the parties were almost two years ago.
It should have been reached in 1996, before the county asked the
public to vote approval of $79.7 million in general obligation bonds
for the facilities.

The route to an acceptable site was roundabout and bumpy, but it ended
up in the right place: 28 acres owned by the Port of Portland in the
Rivergate industrial area.

The route through the bureaucratic and political maze was equally
difficult and delayed. Yet it, too, ended up in the right place. What
the commissioners should approve today addresses a lot of important
concerns, particularly legal points about the differences between
security for a jail, where stay is involuntary, and for a treatment
center, where patients stay by choice -- although their alternative
usually is jail.

All should have been worked out before the voters were asked to write
a check.

The agreement is Solomonlike in its simplicity: County Chairwoman
Beverly Stein's director of community justice would be responsible for
treatment and the patients inside the center. The sheriff would be
responsible for security of the entire complex. Operational guidelines
were drawn up, and the pair would be charged with working out details
with an eye to solutions, not differences.

Commissioners Lisa Naito and Serena Cruz deserve credit for stressing
solutions instead of differences and for not accepting further delay.
With the help of Circuit Judge Julie Frantz, District Attorney Mike
Schrunk and public defender Jim Hennings, they finally brought the
parties together.

Most telling was Frantz's reminder that they shared the same goal --
addressing the county's need for jail and drug- and alcohol-treatment
beds.

That point shouldn't have taken three years to sink
in.