‘We were transparent,’ Frank White claims after jail report was secretly cut. Wait — what?

Jackson County legislators missed an important opportunity Monday to find out why parts of a recent jail study were excised before the document was released to the public.

The January report, by Shive-Hattery Architecture+Engineering and a company called HDR, promised an “objective, transparent, independent analysis ... to inform local decision-making.” It reviewed facts concerning overcrowding at the jail and potential solutions.

On Sunday, though, The Star revealed that roughly half of the study was suppressed before the document was made public. Someone in the office of Jackson County Executive Frank White ordered information omitted from the report before it was published.

On Monday, White denied doing anything improper. “We were transparent on this all the way,” he told us.

Transparent? The public report, which cost $285,000, contained 17 recommendations for improvements at the facility and for criminal incarceration procedures in Jackson County. The original report — the one White’s office edited — contained 29 recommendations.

Sections involving mental health and medical procedures were edited and simplified. Data were removed. A discussion of educational opportunities for inmates was simplified and cut.

A county spokeswoman suggested the edits were made for security reasons, and White claims legislators could have examined the full report at any time. Yet lawmakers sounded angry last week when they learned of the deletions.

“This is just so upsetting to me,” Jackson County Legislature chairwoman Theresa Galvin told The Star. “I can’t wrap my head around why someone would cut the heart out of this study.”

Unfortunately, Galvin and her colleagues weren’t concerned enough about the edits to raise the issue with White on Monday during their regular meeting. The Star’s report wasn’t mentioned in the Legislature’s public session.

Such avoidance tactics are counterproductive because the jail story isn’t going away.

The county has already figured out a way to pay for a new jail, but the public remains completely in the dark about the proposed facility itself: its size, cost, design and other details.

Jackson County residents deserve to know relevant information before any jail proposal is finalized. They should demand input on the location of the jail as well.

Hiding important parts of a jail study sends precisely the wrong message.

This problem isn’t limited to the county legislature or County Executive White. Sheriff Darryl Forté, who was given control of the jail’s operation last year, has yet to publicly present any sort of blueprint for addressing the facility’s immediate challenges. He wasn’t at Monday’s meeting, either.

While county officials play hide-and-seek with the public, the well-documented crisis at the jail continues.

More than 80 percent of the jail’s inmates are being held pre-trial, which means they may be innocent. Those inmates — all inmates — must be treated with dignity.

This must be the year county officials are fully open with the public about the jail. They’ve started on the wrong foot, and the legislature missed a chance Monday to put a stop to this secrecy.

This story was originally published March 4, 2019 at 4:47 PM.