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The Salt Lake County Council voted Tuesday to give Sheriff Jim Winder $705,000 to begin sending county inmates to other jails within as little as two weeks.
The approval will allow Winder to pay $52.50 per inmate housed in another county's jail through July when the state and county will each pay $2.8 million to try to open up to 300 beds in Salt Lake County's jail.
County officials described the plan as a temporary fix to crowding at the jail, and Winder said it would allow him to avoid opening more of Oxbow jail, which he said would be more expensive.
"If we only have 100 inmates [who] we can place, we pay for 100," Winder told the council. "With Oxbow, we're buying the whole house, all rooms and all utilities."
While he now has the money — plus approval for four staffers to work out logistics of the plan — Winder is still finalizing his plan, including where to send inmates. He told The Salt Lake Tribune he was considering a wide range of jails across the state.
Nearly 170 miles east, Daggett County commissioners met Tuesday to talk about the possibility of housing Salt Lake County inmates in their now-empty jail.
The commissioners, which are acting as sheriff while the attorney general's office continues a three-month investigation into the county's jail, said Winder contacted them Monday to see if they were interested in his inmates.
"It would provide us [the chance] to have a track record," Commissioner Jack Lytle said, "to support the fact that we're trying to meet the needs for [the Utah Department of] Corrections."
Corrections, which contracts with Daggett, has pulled all state inmates from the jail pending completion of the investigation.
The commission didn't decide how to move forward regarding Winder's inquiry, but the county is interested.
"I wish we had some idea when we would be getting inmates back, but we have no clue," Commissioner Clyde Slaugh said, adding it would be a positive "if we could bring county inmates in just to help out for a while."
Winder also is considering how he'll choose which inmates are moved, how to get them to the other jails, how they'll communicate with their families and how the county will ensure their health and safety in the new jails.
Twitter: @TaylorWAnderson