The Detention Center
Columbia County Jail and Huber Center
- Operated byColumbia County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address403 Jackson Street, Portage, WI 53901
- Beds165 bunks in the secure jail plus 192 beds at the Huber Center (opened 2005), 357 combined
- Staffing34 jail deputies, 4 sergeants, 1 lieutenant, 1 captain/administrator, 1 clerk, 2 nurses
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Ryan Ringelstetter
Source: Columbia County Sheriff's Office - County Jail · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
7/10Open- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✓PREA audits
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found (Huber Center wing opened 2005; secure jail building date not found)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds357 (165 secure jail + 192 Huber Center)
Since then
- Huber Center opened 2005
The Sheriff
Sheriff Roger L. Brandner
- Runs the jailColumbia County Sheriff's Office operates the County Jail and Huber Center in Portage
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59
- Statutory basisWis. Stat. ch. 59 (county sheriff, custody of jail)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Columbia County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-09-19
The Judges
Wisconsin circuit court judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms under Wis. Const. art. VII — state judicial officers, not county officials.
Columbia County Circuit Court
- Not found
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-19
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardColumbia County Board of Supervisors →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The daily bookings report is explicitly disclaimed by the Sheriff's Office as not reflecting the current jail population in real time; site directs to the VINES victim-notification service for that.
- 2025 adopted county budget book lists Sheriff Administration ($7,426,380), County Jail ($5,531,350), and Jail/Huber Center Maintenance ($1,222,180) as distinct line items.
- FAQ page mentions PREA as a topic heading but the fetched content did not include substantive PREA policy text beyond the heading; recorded as yes since a PREA-labeled section exists on the office's own jail division page.
- No inspection reports, contracts, or deaths-in-custody information found on the site.
- State inspection/oversight: Wisconsin DOC Division of Community Corrections inspects county jails under Wis. Admin. Code DOC 350; not independently confirmed to apply to Columbia County on the county's own site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Columbia County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-09-19 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered