Travis County postpones decision on new women's jail

However, Brown requested to postpone both votes for one week until the court's June 15 session because of a procedural issue related to the resolution's late addition to the agenda. The motion to postpone passed 3-1-1, with Howard and Margaret Gomez joining Brown in favor, Brigid Shea voting against, and Jeff Travillion abstaining.

"I don't think this is going to change in a week ... so I'm not going to support a further delay," Shea said. "I think there's unfortunately been a tremendous amount of misinformation and frankly offensive statements made about how Travis County has been conducting itself. We do not engage in mass incarceration. We have consistently altered our practices to try and reduce the people going into our jail system and instead find ways to support them, and we will continue to do that."

Shea also said that maintaining jail facilities to an acceptable standard was a state-mandated requirement of the county, and that Travis County's correctional complex was overdue for facility and program updates.

"I just want to say for the record that nobody likes jails. I don't like jails. Who likes having to spend our money on it?" she said. "But at the end of the day, we have an unpleasant and unpopular responsibility to maintain the jails."

Following the meeting, Brown reiterated his position against the new correctional facility in a series of tweets.

"Our community needs health care and more support services, not this new jail. ... Let's build a better county where women get the health care they need & we help working class families by investing in the community," he wrote.

.@annhowardtx and I are instead calling for county staff to:

Develop a new strategic plan on the county's criminal justice complex

Present options on how to provide better healthcare in the existing jail

Convene a working group to reduce the number of women in the jail