Grand Forks County jail-sheriff consolidation committee to include

Jan. 11—GRAND FORKS — A new committee to study consolidation of the Grand Forks jail and sheriff’s departments will likely include a wide variety of stakeholders, according to County Commissioner Mark Rustad.

At the commission meeting on Jan. 7,

commissioners empowered Rustad to form a committee to stud

y the logistics, legality and ways that the county could consolidate the two departments. Rustad brought

the item to the commission as a way for the county to potentially save money as it faces headwinds in its budget.

Potential stakeholders include county representatives from the jail and sheriff’s departments, the state’s attorney and city police.

“I think there needs to be somebody from all those camps to have a nice, well-rounded committee,” he said.

Many of the details are being hashed out, but the final committee will likely be decided on sometime in January, according to Rustad. He has also directed State’s Attorney Haley Wamstad to continue to research the legality and history of how the county could consolidate the departments and how the county got here in the first place.

In a Herald report published last week that outlined Rustad’s proposal, he said believes a major issue with the county’s current financial state is

the Grand Forks County Correctional Center expansion project.

He called it a financial anchor around the county’s ankle.

“(It) really never should have been built in the first place,” Rustad said. “But we need to figure out a way to make lemonade out of lemons.”

Commissioner Bob Rost, who has the jail and youth assessment center in his portfolio as commissioner, said any conversation about the proposal needs to be a team effort.

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“(Correctional Center Administrator) Bret Burkholder has explained in great detail about how he’s over functional capacity so many times,” Rost said. “There are ways that we can work this thing out, but we need to work together as a group instead of one person going and saying ‘Well this and this and this’ without anybody else being able to say anything.”

Rost said all the commissioners need to work together to be fiscally responsible with the county’s budget and said he was disappointed in the manner in which the proposal came about. He also expressed doubt about any sort of potential deal with the state, citing capacity and

staffing issues facing facilities across the state.

A majority of the commission approved beginning negotiations with the state for the potential expansion of behavioral health services at the correctional center.

With the jail and sheriff’s departments having been operated as separate departments for more than 40 years, it will take time to combine them — if that is the path the county chooses. Under North Dakota Century Code, the process — and the changes — wouldn’t go into effect for some time.

“Tool chest” provisions in law provide for the method and ways counties in the state can and cannot form their departments. While changing the role of the sheriff could be proposed and approved, the changes wouldn’t likely go into effect until the current term of the sheriff expires in 2026.

According to the North Dakota County Commissioner Association’s guides for county office consolidation or division, “counties that have made strong efforts to hold public meetings throughout the county have generally experienced much greater success and public support.”

How Grand Forks County moves forward will be up for the committee and County Commission to decide. Concerns about space will likely be top of the list. The expansion to the Grand Forks County Correctional Center will be open in the middle of 2025. Other counties,

like Cass County, have begun to look elsewhere to ease overcrowding.

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