Jail renovation workers must pass background checks

By Terry Murry on Wednesday, January 19th, 2022 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories

PENDLETON – Umatilla County Sheriff Terry Rowan says the office is handling the administrative details that go with renovating the jail. One thing that must be done is performing background checks on all construction workers.

“We want to make sure that we’ve got the right people coming into our facility as we move forward,” Rowan said.

He added that he heard a story several years ago where a new jail was being constructed and one of the workers hid weapons and drugs in places inside the new jail. Rowan said the Wenaha Group is not leaving security to chance as the work gets going.

“My hope is that probably by the end of February, we’ll start seeing materials coming in,” Rowan said. “We’ll have to make some adjustments there. We also have some internal conversations as to what our inmate population is going to look like because we intend to continue to operate our facility.”