Bipartisan legislation to fund new Shelby County Jail fails
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - It’s back to the drawing board to find a way to fund a new Shelby County Jail.
Legislation to give Shelby County voters a choice to either raise property taxes or increase local option sales tax to fund a new jail failed at the state capitol Wednesday.
The bi-partisan legislation carried by State Representative John Gillespie (R-Memphis) and State Senator Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) sank in the House State and Local Government Committee in a 7-13-1 vote.
The legislation would have asked Shelby County voters on the August 2026 ballot if they would be in favor of increasing the local option sales tax by one percent, making the rate 3.75%.
The increase in sales tax would have been active for eight years or until money for a new jail was fully funded.
An extra .5% would only remain in unincorporated areas of the county to maintain the new jail.
Since this bill failed, solutions to fund the aging and deteriorating Shelby County Jail appear to be running out.
Another option left is raising the property tax rate by .74 cents, which Shelby County Commissioner Amber Mills tells Action News 5 she is not proposing and would NOT support.
“I don’t want that,” said Shelby County Commissioner Amber Mills. “That’s why the sales tax increase was ideal, because it would have put the burden on people not just inside Shelby County, but those from outside Shelby County... across the country, in the world, that come in to see us...
“...[Raising the local sales option tax] could help us fund our jail. It’s one of those things that’s not glamorous, it’s not exciting, but it is necessary.”
Mills testified in support of the bill in Nashville several times.
Other commissioners have been working with Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner on finding ways to fund a new jail.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office tells Action News 5:
“When you have a situation like we’ve got at the jail, which I think you know, it can only reasonably be described as a humanitarian crisis,” said attorney Jake Brown.
Brown represents the family of Marcus Donald, an inmate who died after he was strangled in a cell pod by another inmate in 2022 while waiting to be released from the jail.
“At some point, if the county is going to continue housing inmates and nobody’s saying, it shouldn’t...“ Brown said. ”...There are lots of people at the jail who need to be in jail. They’re dangerous. But precisely for that reason, the jail needs to have sufficient staffing and adequate facilities to keep the inmates reasonably safe.“
The Shelby County Jail is more than 40 years old.
A Shelby County Sheriff’s Office official who testified in Nashville on April 8 estimated the cost of a new jail to be between $800 million and $1 billion.
They also say $16.5 million in repairs have already been allocated to the jail this fiscal year.
Representatives Tom Leatherwood (R-Arlington) and Gabby Salinas (D-Memphis) voted against the bill.
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