Breaking the Cycle: How Washtenaw County effected meaningful change by mitigating the inequities of fees and fines.

• Author: McClary, Catherine
• Position: Michigan

Flush with American Rescue Plan Act (AR PA) money, the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners was inspired to fund transformational change that would improve the wealth and financial acumen of future generations. County boards of commissioners in Michigan have budget development and oversight responsibility, and board members and other county officials and leaders agreed that the $72 million in stimulus funds from ARPA could enable transformational change throughout all communities in Washtenaw County.

EFFECTING BIG CHANGES

Beyond funding immediate assistance to county residents who had been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and performing deferred maintenance in environmentally sustainable ways to county infrastructure, the board's overriding, long-range goal was to mitigate poverty throughout the county.

Public defender and prosecutor.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Delphia Simpson, the first female public defender appointed by the county, initiated a program to pay cash bail for indigent defendants awaiting trial for low-level crimes. Simpson, along with the county's treasurer and sheriff, partnered with a Detroit, Michigan, group called the Bail Project, a nonprofit started by public defenders in the State of New York.

A person pays bail as collateral to the court system to get out of jail. If the person returns for court proceedings, the money is returned. If they don't return to court, the money goes to the government's general fund. In county jails, most inmates are awaiting trial; they haven't been adjudged guilty. Approximately half are people of color, and in Washtenaw County, more than half have documented mental illnesses.

When a resident is jailed, their medication is stopped until the jail physician can prescribe it after evaluation; their Medicaid benefits are terminated by federal law. Critics of the bail system note that low-income defendants who can't make bail often face the prospect of losing custody of their children while behind bars. Furthermore, imposing unaffordable bail is costly to taxpayers, who collectively pay much more to jail a person than the cost of that person's bail. And the loss of Medicaid benefits burdens the entire community.

Bootcamp. At the end of 2021, Treasurer Catherine McClary attended a GFOA webinar on the ethics of fees and fines because she was concerned about the disparate credit card fees that her county charges. If a county resident uses the courts and pays by credit card, a fee of approximately 3 percent is added, while the county absorbs the fee for many other services. These discrepancies are often due to different software packages used throughout the county.

The treasurer went on to attend a bootcamp sponsored by Cities & Counties for Fine and Fee Justice (CCFFJ) in March 2022, to promote fees and fines reform. She brought along Simpson, Chief Assistant Prosecutor Victoria Burton-Harris, and Racial Equity Officer Alize Asberry Payne. Over the course of two days, Washtenaw County officials learned from experts, including Jose Cisneros, the elected treasurer of the City and County of San Francisco, about how to build equity and fairness into fees and fines.

After the bootcamp, Burton-Harris told the group, "This could be a serious game-changer for residents on the east side of the county. This approach could help break extended probations tethering folks to the system because of outstanding fines, costs, and fees. Failure to pay fines, fees, and costs is one of the top reasons people violate probation and, often, face jail time and lose...