Bill settles insurance woes threatening the Oklahoma County Jail Trust

Finding insurance coverage for the Oklahoma County Jail Trust has proven near impossible, but a bill recently signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt should remove that hurdle.

House Bill 2668, which did not receive much fanfare when it was pushed through the Legislature at the end of session, clarifies existing law to explicitly allow counties with over 600,000 residents and a trust running the county jail to pay for judgments from lawsuits against the jail through local property tax rolls.

This is currently how the county funds large judgments, but there was disagreement in the county over whether that practice could continue when the Oklahoma County Jail Trust takes over management of the jail from the sheriff’s office on July 1, said Rep. Mark Lepak, R-Claremore.

If the trust could not levy judgments against the tax rolls, the other option was to find and fund an expensive liability insurance plan upfront, which the trust had been trying to do for months with no success.

Read more: https://oklahoman.com/article/5663359/bill-settles-insurance-woes-threatening-the-oklahoma-county-jail-trust