At budget hearings in May, Undersheriff Keith Boyd had just 10 minutes to break down the requests for what would be the largest ask in Monterey County’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2025-26.
Boyd brought what he saw as good news in a tight budget year: a decrease in the department’s initial requests. Among the cuts: $2 million in overtime initially requested; $750,000 in funding requested for Axon – a drone and body camera vendor – and a $7.2 million placeholder for projected increases in jail health care costs.
“The big one we’ve eliminated, because we don’t have a new contract in place at this time, is the increase of $7.2 million,” Boyd said. “Which was a projection based on the market.”
The final cost of a new jail health care contract remains unknown, for now. Boyd added that he expected the Sheriff’s Office would begin negotiating with the selected vendor in the first two weeks of June.
The County has spent the last four months soliciting bids and evaluating proposals for what will potentially be a new health care provider for the Monterey County Jail, as the current $44.3 million, three-year contract with Wellpath ends on Dec. 31. A request for proposals was issued on Feb. 20 by the County’s Contracts and Purchasing Department. As of the Weekly’s deadline, the next provider has been tentatively awarded.
According to records obtained by the Weekly via a California Public Records Act request, personnel from seven health care companies attended a mandatory pre-bid meeting that took place on March 10: Armor; California Health and Recovery Solutions, PC; Correctional Healthcare Partners; NaphCare; Physician Correctional, USA; 22nd Century Technologies, Inc.; and Wellpath.
In an emailed statement, company founder Taylor Fithian says that after 40 years providing care in the jail, Wellpath did not make the cut. “We understand the County’s intention to transition services to a new provider organization, and we will work with the new provider to help implement a seamless transition of care,” he says.
The next health care provider will be expected to deliver comprehensive onsite medical, dental, mental health and pharmaceutical services for incarcerated individuals, in compliance with a 2015 class-action settlement. The terms mandate court oversight with independent monitoring; Wellpath has faced fines for noncompliance.
The other bidders are not without criticism: Armor has been found liable in inmate deaths in Ohio and Wisconsin; NaphCare and Physician Correctional have been sued in cases involving wrongful deaths in custody.
Medical needs have risen in recent years, according to documents obtained by the Weekly. From 2019 to 2023, hospital days rose from 3,893 in 2019 to 6,042; emergency room visits increased from 283 to 503. Boyd noted that jail health care costs increased by nearly $3.4 million in fiscal year 2023 alone.
Once a proposed contract is drafted, it will head to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors for approval.
(1) comment
The exit of Wellpath from Monterey County Jail isn’t a solution—it’s the long-delayed admission of failure. For years, the public has watched as incarcerated people have died under suspect conditions, while a private contractor collected millions under court oversight and still failed to meet basic standards of care. Now, we are told a new provider is being selected—quietly, behind closed doors—with several bidders carrying their own histories of litigation, negligence, and inmate deaths.
This is not due diligence. It is roulette with human lives.
Healthcare inside our jail is not just a line item in a budget—it’s a moral obligation under the law. The current approach—waiting until contracts expire, cycling through vendors with troubling records, and reacting to lawsuits—is reactive governance at its worst. The Sheriff’s Office may be negotiating, but where is the public voice? Where is the community oversight? Where is the assurance that this time will be different?
We cannot keep swapping one troubled vendor for another and calling it progress. What’s required now is independent, structural accountability. A civilian oversight committee with subpoena power. An Inspector General who reports to the public, not through layers of legal insulation. Every contract, every performance metric, every death must be subject to open, relentless scrutiny—not hidden behind NDAs and internal memos.
This is not about politics. It’s about people. And the fundamental truth is this: no one should die in county custody because the lowest bidder failed to provide basic medical care.
If the County is serious about justice, transparency, and human dignity, then it must act now—not just to finalize a contract, but to rebuild a system that has failed, again and again, to protect the lives it holds.
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