Shasta County $20 million jail grant: Where it went, where it didn't

Ever wonder what happened to the $20 million Shasta County gave up because it couldn’t afford to run the jail that the state money was supposed to help build?

Most of it has yet to be used, still making its way down a line of eligible counties after Humboldt County lost out on it over a technicality earlier this week.

And Humboldt and Shasta aren’t the only ones to have problems using the money — Lake, Santa Barbara and San Mateo counties also gave up their Senate Bill 1022 grants, making for a combined $103 million sent back to the state fund.

“I think the Legislature is more interested in releasing people from prison than building prisons,” Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said of the challenge in making a jail-construction grant actually pan out.

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Most recently, the California Board of State and Community Corrections denied Humboldt’s bid for $17 million of Shasta’s former money because that county's mental health pitch was different from the idea it initially proposed when trying to get a piece of the pie, the Eureka Times-Standard reported.

“It’s government bureaucracy. I hate it,” the paper quoted Sheriff William Honsal as saying.

Sheriff’s officials from Humboldt didn’t return a message seeking comment Friday.

Some $3.4 million of Shasta’s would-be money went to Madera County to help finish off funding for a $19 million project that county proposed. But the remaining $17 million or so will now open up for the next in line: Trinity County, said John Prince, deputy director of the state board.

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There are six other small counties in line after Trinity, but Prince said that if the money gets returned to the state by all of them, it could end up going to a larger county.

In Shasta County, supervisors voted early this year to give up the grant because initial budget predictions from Bosenko’s office for ongoing costs were thought to be faulty. And it's not the first time Shasta's given back a hefty state jail grant because of overhead concerns — the same thing happened with a $33 million grant from the board in 2012. 

Prince said for each county that’s given back one of the grants, “there’s going to be that many reasons.” Besides operating costs, Prince said sometimes it’s rising construction costs, and sometimes a county just decides the initial facility they proposed isn’t needed anymore.

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Either way, Bosenko said reading the fine print is important, because counties can get “strikes” that will count against them for winning future jail grants if they keep giving them back.

 “(It’s like) you win a car, but now you can’t afford the gas and insurance,” he said. “That’s what counties large and small have been wresting.”