JAIL TAX FOES CALL ON LEIS TO SHARE CASH FROM DRUG SEIZURES

A coalition of groups that last week helped defeat a sales tax increase for
a new Hamilton County jail is now calling on Hamilton County Sheriff Simon
Leis to release several million dollars in drug-forfeiture funds to prevent
the release of inmates from the Hamilton County Justice Center.

The group is urging Leis to let county commissioners spend at least half of
an estimated $6.5 million in confiscated proceeds from drug busts to lease
extra beds in Butler County's jail.

"He presently spends that money on coloring books, teddy bears and the Boy
Scouts," said Jason Gloyd, spokesman for the group We Demand a Better Plan.
"We want to know where the priorities are."

The group also proposed rechanneling surplus funds from a Hamilton County
hotel tax, approved as part of the financing plan for the expansion of
downtown Cincinnati's convention center. It proposed the establishment of a
new night court to let people quickly plead to minor violations and avoid
spending the night in jail. Another proposal involves charging overnight
jail fees to local municipalities that pass stricter legislation than the
Ohio Revised Code.

One example would be a city of Cincinnati marijuana law that resulted in
3,200 arrests in its first year, according to Hamilton County Commissioner
Pat DeWine. The Republican commissioner said he'll request an audit to
determine how much the city should pay Hamilton County for bed space.

"There are people in the county jail who are there only on a city charge.
Sixty-five dollars a night is what we charge local jurisdictions. The city
hasn't been billed anything," DeWine said.

Activists opposing the sales tax increase included the Cincinnati Chapter
of the NAACP, the anti-tax group COAST and Cincinnati's Libertarian Party,
the Green Party of Southwest Ohio and Hamilton County business owners.

Hamilton County Commissioner David Pepper said the anti-tax activists are
wrong when they suggest hotel taxes and assets taken in drug arrests can be
rechanneled. The hotel-tax idea would take a change in state law, said
Pepper, while the drug-forfeiture money cannot be used to supplant ongoing
county expenses.

"I welcome any and all new ideas," Pepper said, but most of the ideas
they've come up with are either not new ideas or they're illegal."