A quarter of Racine County's proposed property-tax levy would go to its jail. The DA says a shortage of

Originally published by Racine County Eye.

What to know

The proposed 2027 budget would spend $21.1 million to run the Racine County Jail. Property taxpayers would cover $17.2 million.

Compared with the 2026 budget, the taxpayer share rises 2%. Compared with what the county now expects 2026 to cost, it rises 8.3%.

The jail's $17.2 million is about 25% of the county's proposed $68.8 million property-tax levy, roughly $1 of every $4.
The smaller increase depends on the state paying $1.81 million to house state prisoners, more than double this year's expected payments.

About $1 of every $4 Racine County plans to collect in property taxes next year would go to its jail, and the county’s top prosecutor says people are staying there longer because they wait weeks or months for a lawyer.

The jail would cost $21.1 million to run in 2027. How much more that costs taxpayers depends on which number you start from.

Under the 2027 budget County Executive Ralph Malicki proposed, the jail’s share of the county property-tax levy would be $17.2 million. That is $342,133, or 2%, more than the county budgeted for the jail in 2026.

When presenting the budget to the County Board on Sept. 22, Malicki said he kept the overall levy increase at 3.8%, “exactly matching the rate of inflation.” Near the end of his address, he told supervisors, “Our responsibility is to separate what would be nice to do from what we need to do.”

But the jail is now expected to cost taxpayers about $15.9 million less than budgeted this year. Measured against that figure, next year’s jail levy is $1.3 million, or 8.3%, higher.

Both numbers come from the same county budget document. The difference is the starting point. The proposal is not final. The County Board, not the county executive, adopts the budget and can amend it first. Residents can reach their supervisor through the County Board’s page before the vote.

The jail’s $17.2 million is about a quarter of the $68.8 million in property taxes the county proposes to levy in 2027, according to the proposed budget. The overall levy would rise 3.8%; the jail’s share would rise 2%.

Neither percentage is a change in a homeowner’s tax bill. They measure only the jail’s slice of the county levy.

A longer climb

The one-year comparison hides a longer climb. According to county budget records, the jail cost taxpayers $12.8 million in 2024 after revenue. The 2027 proposal would raise that to $17.2 million, about $4.4 million, or 34% more. Jail spending rose from $17 million in 2024 to $19.5 million in 2025 and would reach $21.1 million in 2027.

Why the jail costs more

Jail spending would rise $1.5 million, or 7.8%, over this year’s budget. Three accounts explain most of it:

• Wages: $9.28 million, up $489,678. The budget adds five corrections officer positions paid for with state revenue and set to expire under a sunset provision.
• Medical services: $4.03 million, up $214,361.
• Prescriptions: $500,000 in a pharmacy account that had no money budgeted this year. The budget does not say whether that is new spending or costs moved from another account.

Malicki told the County Board that every new position in his budget “is either fully offset by revenue, or responds to a documented, significant operational or safety risk.” His Sept. 22 budget address did not otherwise discuss jail costs.

Capt. Cary Madrigal, the Republican candidate for sheriff, said the jail expanded its mental health services after deaths in custody, including those of Malcolm James and Ronquale Ditello-Scott.

“Our jail has never seen the level of people that have mental health problems,” Madrigal said in an Oct. 16 interview with Racine County Eye. The jail now has nursing staff around the clock and two mental health workers on weekdays, she said.

She said the county has few options when it buys that care. “There are only like two possibilities of companies that we can go through,” she said, adding that the cost of medical, mental health and food service in the jail “goes up every year.”

Donald Vandervest, the Democratic candidate, who began his career as a correctional deputy, said the jail’s contracted care needs outside scrutiny. “Our jail healthcare has lacked independent oversight for too long,” he wrote in a Racine County Eye candidate questionnaire published in August. “If a vendor cuts corners on care, they will face immediate financial penalties and contract reviews.”

In written answers to Racine County Eye on Oct. 18, responding to the same questions Madrigal answered in her interview, Vandervest said he would “look at every contract that comes in to look for ways to control costs.”

He proposed running the jail commissary in-house instead of through a vendor, saying the county now receives roughly 15% of commissary sales and “can earn 100% while also employing local folks.”

On mental health, he wrote that “the jail should never become a substitute for a psychiatric hospital,” and said he would review how long people wait for medical clearance and where they are sent for psychiatric care.

The county is studying whether it could provide that care itself, better or more cheaply. Gwen Zimmer, a director in the county Finance Department, told the County Board on Sept. 22 that staff is researching “a correctional arm of the mental health division” covering the jail and juvenile detention, because the jail’s medical and mental health contract costs “continue to escalate.”

That night, the board approved $80,000 in opioid settlement money that Zimmer said would let the county bring in outside experts to study whether the idea is feasible and continue training staff.

The money that keeps the increase small

The budget keeps the increase at 2% because it expects $1.81 million from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for housing state prisoners in 2027, more than double the $829,620 the county expects to collect this year. The county budgeted just $550,000 for that line in 2026.

The state paid counties $60 per prisoner per day in 2024-25, up from $51.46, a rate unchanged since 2004-05, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. At that rate, Racine would pay $1.81 million, enough to cover about 83 state prisoners on an average day. This year’s expected payments work out to about 38.

If those payments stayed at this year’s level and nothing else changed, the jail’s taxpayer share would be about $18.2 million, a 7.8% increase instead of 2%. The budget does not say how many state prisoners it assumes or what daily rate it uses, and the county has not answered that question.

Overtime

The budget sets jail overtime at $1.3 million, the same as this year’s budget. The county expects to actually spend about $1.68 million on jail overtime this year. The budget does not say what would bring it down.

Malicki said in his budget address that the corrections division is at its highest staffing level since 2019.

Both sheriff candidates say filling vacancies will bring overtime down. Vandervest wrote that “once the department becomes fully staffed the overtime will come down,” and proposed an on-call list of part-time, state-certified correctional officers. Madrigal wrote that she would offer voluntary overtime to all available staff before ordering anyone to stay, and that mandatory overtime “should be the exception rather than the norm.”

How long people stay in jail

The Sheriff’s Office’s 2024 annual report lists the average length of stay at 96 days in 2024, up from 26 days in 2023. The office has not explained how it calculated that figure or whether it measured the two years the same way.

The county’s population figures also conflict. Its 2025 annual financial report lists an average daily jail population of 630 in 2024 and 779 in 2025. The Sheriff’s Office’s own 2024 annual report puts 2024 at 573. The financial report lists the figure in its unaudited statistical section, which cites the Sheriff’s Office as the source.

Racine County District Attorney Tricia Hanson said the main reason people spend longer in jail is that they cannot get a lawyer. Hanson is also co-manager of Madrigal’s sheriff campaign, as she told Racine County Eye in July.

“Our biggest problem right now with jail days is that people don’t have lawyers,” Hanson said in an Oct. 14 interview. “People wait weeks and months.”

She said the state public defender’s office either reports a conflict or cannot find an attorney, and it doesn’t publish its conflict policy. She said she has gone to the jail herself, with someone else present, to meet defendants who could not get a lawyer.

The state’s top public defender has made the same point.

“When our clients have to wait months for an attorney, their constitutional rights are in jeopardy,” State Public Defender Jennifer Bias said in January, when her office backed a bill to add 18 public defenders and 35 support staff statewide. “Wisconsin’s justice system desperately needs more public defenders.”

The Justice for All Act never reached a vote. The state Senate dropped it from its calendar in March, and the session ended without it, according to a State Public Defender release.

“Our attorneys are drowning,” Bias said then.

In Wisconsin, the state, not counties, runs public defense. Defendants who qualify are represented by the State Public Defender’s Racine office or, when it has a conflict or no room, by private attorneys the state pays $100 an hour. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported that the rate drew more lawyers to take state cases, though “challenges remain in recruiting attorneys to accept the most serious case types.”

Losing attorneys to burnout “compounds an already difficult situation,” Kevin Smith, the agency’s regional attorney manager, told lawmakers in January. “It’s a vicious cycle.”

The delays are also the subject of a lawsuit. In Thomas v. Evers, filed in Brown County in 2022 against the governor, Bias and the state Public Defender Board, the plaintiffs allege that at least 8,445 people charged with felonies statewide since 2019 waited more than 30 days for an appointed lawyer after their first court appearance. An earlier court order noted evidence of affected defendants in four counties, including Racine. In January, Brown County Circuit Judge Thomas J. Walsh refused to let the case proceed as a class action, ruling that delays vary too much by county, court, and case to decide together. The plaintiffs appealed that ruling to the state Court of Appeals.

The county pays part of the cost. When a judge appoints a lawyer for someone who can’t afford one but doesn’t qualify for a public defender, the county pays. Racine County spent $909,982 on those appointments in 2023 and recovered $228,003, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Its net cost, $681,978, was 8.2% of the statewide net cost for all counties.

Hanson said her office tries to keep some people out of jail.

“Every day, I have people who don’t get charged and get released from jail because we’re going to try to do a diversion with them,” she said in a July 28 interview. “I’m never going to get the staffing I need from the state. So the only way that I can make this happen is to find ways to keep people out of the system.”

Malicki credited that work in his budget address, saying the district attorney’s diversion coordinator has helped steer almost 1,600 criminal cases and almost 1,200 criminal traffic cases away from formal prosecution since 2020.

The county has not produced records showing how much of the jail’s cost increase, if any, comes from longer stays.

What the candidates for sheriff say

The next sheriff will run the jail, but the County Board controls its budget and approves its major contracts.

Madrigal said the jail uses electronic monitoring to release some people while their cases are pending, with about 25 people on it now. Asked what share of people are held because they cannot post bail, she said she would have to check but believed it is “probably a pretty higher percentage.”

Vandervest wrote that he did not have the numbers, but that “public safety should determine who needs to remain in custody, not just someone’s ability to pay.” Asked how he would manage longer jail stays, he wrote: “This is an important issue, but ultimately, this is up to the court system and the District Attorney’s office.”

Vandervest, a deputy now assigned to courthouse security, said the jail can’t be the only answer to addiction. “We cannot simply arrest our way out of drug addiction and mental health crises,” he wrote in the August questionnaire. Pairing accountability with treatment and reentry support, he wrote, would “break the cycle of recidivism, lower jail costs, and keep Racine County families safe.” He said he would use state opioid settlement money to fund jail-based recovery programs and would “publish every single vendor agreement, fee, and contract award on a public online dashboard.”

Madrigal proposed performance measures, chart reviews and corrective action plans for the jail’s medical contractor. Both candidates said in August that sharing services across agencies could cut costs.

The general election is Nov. 3.

What we asked and haven’t heard back

The county answered Racine County Eye’s questions about the overall 2027 budget on Oct. 8. Questions sent to the county executive’s office for Finance on Oct. 2 and Oct. 6 about the jail’s medical contract, the bed-rental forecast, federal jail reimbursement and jail population figures have not been answered; the county said Oct. 8 it was preparing responses, and the communications manager handling them has since gone on leave. The Sheriff’s Office has not answered questions sent Oct. 2 and Oct. 6 about jail population, staffing, overtime and state bed rentals. Racine County Eye sent further questions to the county, the Sheriff’s Office and the district attorney on Oct. 29. This story will be updated when they respond.

Questions readers ask

How much will the Racine County Jail cost in 2027? The proposed budget would spend $21.1 million on the jail. After state and other revenue, property taxpayers would cover $17.2 million.

How much of Racine County’s property-tax levy goes to the jail? About 25%. The jail’s $17.2 million is roughly a quarter of the $68.8 million levy the county proposes for 2027.

Why does the increase look like 2% or 8%? The jail’s taxpayer share is 2% higher than the 2026 budget and 8.3% higher than the county’s current 2026 cost estimate.

Why are people staying in the Racine County Jail longer? The Sheriff’s Office reported an average stay of 96 days in 2024, up from 26 in 2023, but didn’t explain the calculation. District Attorney Tricia Hanson says the main reason is a shortage of defense lawyers; sheriff candidate Donald Vandervest says the courts and prosecutors control length of stay.

Who decides the jail budget? The Racine County Board adopts the budget and can amend County Executive Ralph Malicki’s proposal before the vote.

Sources: Racine County 2027 proposed budget and 2026 adopted budget (jail section); Racine County 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, statistical section; Racine County single audits; Racine County Sheriff’s Office 2024 annual report; Racine County Board meeting, Sept. 22, 2026; Racine County Eye interviews with Tricia Hanson (July 28 and Oct. 14) and Cary Madrigal (Oct. 16); Donald Vandervest’s written answers to Racine County Eye (Oct. 18); Racine County Eye sheriff candidate voter guide, August 2026; Wisconsin State Public Defender release, Jan. 7, 2026; Wisconsin State Public Defender release, March 17, 2026; Thomas v. Evers order, Jan. 13, 2026; Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau papers on the State Public Defender and county contract beds.

Related coverage: Racine County expects $24 million in sales tax revenue. Here’s where the money would go · Racine County sheriff candidates in their own words · Racine County’s proposed 2026 budget keeps taxes low, critics say it shortchanges people and infrastructure

How we calculated it: Taxpayer share (net levy) = jail spending minus jail revenue. Percent change = (2027 proposed ÷ comparison figure − 1) × 100. Beds per day = annual bed-rental revenue ÷ $60 ÷ 365.

Correction, Oct. 30, 2026: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Ronquale Ditello-Scott, who died in the Racine County Jail in 2021.