The “Public Safety” Levy Trick
County leadership has a simple pitch: approve a new property tax, or we will shrink the jail and the District Attorney’s office.
They call it the “Public Safety” Levy. I support law enforcement as the first job of Coos County government. I do not support a tax increase that lets every other department off the hook.
They already collect enough money to treat the jail and the DA’s office as the priority. They are asking you for a second pile of cash so they do not have to choose.
Here is the trick.
“Your friend is saving up for a new car that will cost $15,000.
He already has $10,000 in savings. He tells you he needs $10,000 to buy a vehicle for work. You give him the $10,000 and make him promise it will be used only to buy the car.
He takes your $10,000, adds $5,000 of his own, and buys the car. He kept the letter of his promise: your money went only to the car.
He now has $5,000 of “his” savings left over. He spends it on a vacation.”
Did he use $5,000 of his money on that vacation, or $5,000 of yours? Was he honest about what he needed? Would you trust him with your money again?
That is the levy.
What they are asking for
Measure 6-213 is a five-year local option tax of $0.98 per $1,000 of assessed value. On a home assessed at $200,000, that is about $196 a year. County officials say it would raise about $5.7 million in the first year — enough, they say, to open one more jail pod and hire two prosecutors.
The fine print will say the new money is restricted to public safety and will be audited. That can all be true, and the trick still works.
Money is fungible. If a new restricted check covers the jail, the old unrestricted check that was paying for the jail is now free. Other departments stay whole. Leadership gets to say they “fully funded public safety.” You paid the raise.
That is not a theory. It is how an earmarked tax works when the county will not put public safety first in the budget it already has.
They have the money. They will not choose.
Coos County’s general fund is in the $25 million to $30 million range. The jail and the DA’s office should be funded first. Everything else should live on what is left.
That is not what they have done.
The jail is built for about 250 beds. For years it has run at a fraction of that — at points around 50 beds, then two of five pods. The county has emergency-released an average of more than 70 inmates a month. The DA’s office has been running about 7 deputy district attorneys when the caseload calls for something closer to 12 to 16. Criminals walk because there is no bed and no prosecutor, not because Coos County is broke.
Meanwhile the Board of Commissioners gave themselves a raise of about 10 percent. Coos Health & Wellness sits on a budget in the neighborhood of $29 million. Other departments received increases while the jail stayed closed and the backlog grew.
They have the money to fund law enforcement. They do not have the money to fund law enforcement AND every lower priority they refuse to touch.
If the Assessor, the Clerk, or I.T. needs its own tax, put that tax on the ballot and say so. Do not brand a general-fund bailout as a “public safety” levy.
This is not new. After the 2006–2007 cuts, jail capacity never came back. Commissioner Bob Main has been in office since 2009. In that time the county has not restored a functioning jail. Now the same leadership says that without a tax increase they will cut 20 or more sheriff’s deputies. That is not a plan. That is a threat.
Public safety first means the rest of the budget goes second
If the jail and the DA’s office are actually the priority, do this with the money you already collect:
Reverse the budget increases handed to lower-priority departments — starting with the Commissioners’ own raise.
Fund the jail and prosecution to a minimum standard written into county code: on the order of 200 jail beds and 12 prosecutors, so a future board cannot quietly starve them again.
Use the emergency authority the county already has (ORS 294.481) to redirect available funds while the pods reopen.
Then — and only then — let every other department compete for what is left.
That is the household rule. You make the car payment before you book the vacation.
I have laid out the staffing, funding, and crime pieces in more detail here:
Seven Solutions to Fix the Jail Crisis
How to crack down on crime in Coos County
You do not need a new tax to do any of that. You need a board that will tell the rest of county government to wait.
The question in front of you
Almost everyone in this county wants the jail open. That is not the dispute.
The dispute is whether public safety is first in the budget, or first only after you approve a raise.
If they will not fund the jail from the general fund they already have, they are not out of money. They are out of willingness to choose.
Did they use their own money for the vacation, or yours? Were they honest about what they needed? Would you trust them with another blank check?
Vote no. Fund the jail. Make the rest of county government live on the taxes you already pay.
Postscript: September 2026
I wrote the essay above in April 2024, before Measure 6-213 went to the ballot.
Voters rejected that levy about 59 percent to 41 percent. In November the county came back with a second jail levy, Measure 6-217. Voters rejected that one even more clearly — about 63 percent no.
Then the board still had a choice.
A failed levy does not empty the general fund. It only means there is no new tax. The commissioners still decided what to keep and what to cut.
They had two options:
Keep the jail and the DA whole, and make every other department absorb the shortfall.
Protect the rest of county government, and shrink law enforcement.
They picked option two. Capacity was slashed toward half. Inmates were released early. Sheriff’s Office staff were laid off. The District Attorney lost prosecutors and had to stop taking some cases.
Leadership pointed at the failed levies and said, “See, we told you we didn’t have the money.”
That does not prove they were broke. It proves what they would not touch. A household that skips the car payment and still takes the vacation is not out of money. It is out of priorities.
That was the last move in the same trick.
A no vote is not permission to empty the jail while the rest of the organization stays whole. A no vote is an instruction: fund public safety first, from the taxes already on the books, and make every other department live on what is left.
They did the opposite. The vacation got protected. The car payment did not.
The argument has not changed. The record has. Two levies failed. The jail was the thing they chose to shrink. Until the board is willing to put 200 beds and a fully staffed DA’s office ahead of everything else in the general fund, a “public safety” tax is still just a way to buy the rest of county government more time.