By Rose Phillips, Iowa City
I rarely buy stuff on Amazon. But in 2023, I bought some breast pump parts that, if I recall correctly, I couldn’t find anywhere else. Imagine someone was so bitterly opposed to Amazon’s business practices that they didn’t think anyone had the right to buy stuff from them. Imagine they took the boxes off my porch and left some money to compensate me for the value. Unconscionable, right?
That’s basically the approach V Fixmer-Oraiz endorsed when they cast the sole vote on Nov. 21, 2024 against renewing Sheriff’s contracts with the cities of Hills, Solon, and several other rural communities. Mandi Remington wasn’t on the board yet but she was of like mind. Iowa law requires all municipalities to provide law enforcement but many small communities can’t afford their own police departments. My impression is that Fixmer-Oraiz, perhaps subconsciously, filed away these communities and the people in them as irrelevant, beneath their notice or concern, and not part of their constituency — even though it was an at-large seat.
It should go without saying that it’s beyond the pale for an elected official to make a decision for a community where they don’t live, by fiat, and without so much as consulting them. In other words, they didn’t do democracy. All the more shocking when that official has a background in urban and regional planning, which emphasizes the critical role of engaging with the community groups that will bear the consequences of your decisions.
Fixmer-Oraiz and Remington have also done many commendable things for the county, and I wouldn’t necessarily have voted for either of their primary opponents if I lived in their districts. But going back to the Amazon scenario, it’s entirely reasonable to question their judgment and follow-through on other issues — namely, developing an alternative to the proposed jail. For me, the biggest impediment to voting No is my lack of trust that the incoming Board will urgently and effectively craft an alternative so the people incarcerated there don’t remain in appalling conditions. For my part, I’m committed to not voting Yes simply to spite a couple Supervisors about past grievances and force someone else to pay the price — even though that’s exactly what the No vote signified to those rural communities.
As others have noted, Rod Sullivan, as the longest-serving Supervisor, has to shoulder a big share of the blame for the condition of the current jail and questions about JCSO’s conduct, since all this has happened on his watch. I would’ve liked to see our Supervisors, as a group, commit themselves steadfastly to the goal of long-term decarceration, proactively gather community input over the past couple years, and question the JCSO’s unexamined assumptions — while also respecting the expertise of those who deal with the technical and regulatory aspects of jail design. A Supervisor who doesn’t trust the JCSO’s explanations — and the skepticism is warranted — has an obligation to fact-check it with an intellectually honest third party who has comparable expertise. With higher Supervisor salaries for part-time work than most of us earn for full-time work, heaven knows that’s not too much to ask.
As a group, the Supervisors haven’t done that work. And if it’s true that JCSO has stonewalled Fixmer-Oraiz and Remington’s info requests, the other Supervisors are especially culpable for not backing them up. But Sullivan is off the Board come November, so the question of his culpability is irrelevant to whether we can trust the incoming Board to do what they haven’t done in the last two years.
I’m leaning toward voting No and taking a leap of faith in the incumbent Supervisors that they haven’t entirely earned. But I think I and many others in Johnson County could vote No on the jail in better conscience if the incoming Supervisors do something before November to earn skeptics’ trust that they’ll work in good faith to find an alternative. One way to do that would be by acknowledging and atoning for past lapses in judgment like the vote against the JCSO contracts with our rural communities.
