Neither the city nor county left a joint meeting Friday of the county board of supervisors and Columbus City Council with a check in-hand, but officials from both entities believe the financial disputes between them are well on their way to being resolved.

By the time the 50-minute meeting at City Hall adjourned, the two sides formed a joint committee to determine an agreed figure the city would pay to settle 15 months of unpaid bills for housing municipal prisoners in Lowndes County Adult Detention Center.

As part of the compromise, the county would not pay the city roughly $173,000 for its share of interlocal agreements for recycling, animal control, highway right-of-way mowing and Columbus-Lowndes Airport operations for this fiscal year. That amount would instead be deducted from what the city pays in the settlement.

“What I get from today is there’s movement there,” said Trip Hairston, president for the board of supervisors, toward the end of the joint session. “There’s a spirit of cooperation between both sides. I’m encouraged by it.”

Columbus paid a $25 daily rate per inmate before the city and county renegotiated the terms in September 2022. Under the new agreement, the city would pay fees on a graduating scale, starting with $30 the first year, $35 the second and $45 for the third year onward.

The attorney general’s office approved that agreement, then offered opinions in spring 2025 to Oxford and Clinton that state law caps the amount a municipality can pay a county for those services at $25 daily per inmate for the first 30 days and $32.71 each day thereafter.

Since March 2025, the city failed to pay the county anything for the jail, with Mayor Stephen Jones and City Attorney Jeff Turnage asserting the city was recuperating what it had over the previous 2 1/2 years, which prompted the county to send the city a demand letter in April for the unpaid amount.

At the statutory rate, the city accrued unpaid jail debt of $321,480 through May of this year, according to county calculations presented at Friday’s meeting.

Further, the county demanded $192,131 for the city’s unpaid share of E-911 expenses from Fiscal Year 2025. The two sides operated for more than 30 years on a handshake deal, evenly splitting E-911 costs that a state telecommunications surcharge did not cover. The legislature increased that surcharge in 2025 and prohibited counties from entering new interlocal agreements until October 2027.

Since there was no interlocal agreement in place, Turnage asserted the city could not legally pay the bill for FY 2025, and he stood by that position Friday.

Instead, the city asked for written assurance from the state auditor’s office that it would not be penalized for jail overpayments between September 2022 and March 2025, which the county said it had already requested.

From there, a committee of Jones, Hairston, another councilman and another supervisor, would hash out a fair number for the city to pay to settle the dispute. Then Turnage would work with County Attorney Tim Hudson to hash out the legal language of the compromise.

Turnage suggested making the county whole by “rolling the bigger figure” into a jail settlement, rather than ascribing any of the paid amount to E-911. Hudson, along with most other city and county officials, seemed fine with that plan.

“Then going forward, we’ll pay whatever the law says we can pay,” Jones told The Dispatch after the meeting.

Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears argued for a different solution.

He noted the city had budgeted $300,000 for jail costs for Fiscal Year 2026, which began in October, seven months after the city had quit paying the bill. Additionally, the city budgeted $164,000 this fiscal year for E-911, despite the new law taking effect in July 2025.

“If we can’t pay it, why is it in the budget?” Spears asked.

Spears said the city should pay the county what it owed for both, then invoice the county for any perceived overages paid since 2022. That suggestion seemed to fall on deaf ears.

The one caveat to the current plan is if the auditor either says the city will be penalized for paying over the legal amount for jail services before March 2025, or if the office declines to offer an opinion altogether. In that case, Hairston said the city and county could jointly petition circuit court for clarity.

“We got everybody feeling good about a path forward,” Turnage said toward the end of Friday’s joint meeting. “I’m optimistic we can get there.”

Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.