Throughout the financial feeding frenzy, Sheriff Martin Ryan remained cautiously optimistic.

Sure, he admitted, it was frustrating watching other small and mid-sized counties given preference in the pecking order for $750 million in jail funding being authorized as part of the state's plan to reform California's prison system, especially when those counties hadn't locked down the prerequisites like Amador had.

Amador had partnered with San Joaquin and Calaveras counties on sponsoring a re-entry facility at an abandoned women's facility in Stockton, avoiding the public opposition to these "mini-prisons" that had scuttled other re-entry plans in counties like Yolo and Shasta. The county had official support from its board of supervisors as well, and was zeroing in on a location for a new jail site in Martell, though processing sewage remained a challenge.

The Stockton facility will help prepare Amador County's inmates who are within 12 months of their parole date to receive counseling and job training in an effort to reduce the state's 70 percent recidivism rate.

Essentially, Amador officials were putting themselves in as good a position as they could to lock down millions to replace an aging, overcrowded jail built when Ronald Reagan was in his first term.

Yet when the rankings for jail funding were released at state Corrections Standards Authority meetings in May and September, Amador County kept coming up just short.

After the last CSA meeting in Berkeley, Ryan did cop to lowered expectations. As the CSA board tentatively awarded the funds to four medium-sized and large counties, three of which had no plans then to build re-entry facilities, Ryan described his reaction: "And we're screaming up and down, 'No,'" Ryan said.

While frustrated, he thought it still possible Amador could ultimately receive its request for $14 million toward a $26 million jail project.

At the CSA board meeting in Sacramento on Thursday, Amador County did better, securing a conditional award of $22.7 million toward the construction of a new county jail facility. The amount is conditioned on the county entering into siting agreements for a re-entry facility and obtaining resolutions of support from appropriate municipalities, all of which the county has done.

"From that perspective, I think they're on solid footing," said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Seth Unger.

The CSA board will make its final recommendations in January, Unger added. The department is currently working with the California Attorney General's Office on getting a clean bond opinion to be able to sell the bonds that would finance construction of the re-entry facilities and jails.

Amador's amount represents the state's 75 percent of the total project cost of $30.3 million, the balance of which the county will have to come up with.

That could prove difficult.

The county narrowly avoided layoffs when it approved its 2008-09 budget in September. With the state's fiscal wound reopened to the tune of $11 billion, Amador and other municipalities may have to revisit budgets they thought resolved.

Before the CSA board's conditional award Thursday, county officials pledged to look at creative funding sources should Amador receive state funding.

In a statement, Ryan acknowledged the challenge: "I know this grant award is somewhat bittersweet given the county's current economic situation, but the need to replace our outdated and overcrowded jail is critical to a secure future for the citizens of our county."

The current 24-year-old jail is rated for 76 beds and regularly runs 10 to 15 percent over capacity, according to the sheriff's office, in spite of programs to allow lesser offenders to spend time out of the facility, such as a home electronic monitoring program and work release program. In 2007, the average daily population at the jail was 80 inmates. The jail released 223 inmates that year due to a lack of housing capacity.

The proposed new facility would meet the county's 2010 need of 165 beds as determined by a recent jail needs assessment and would address the safety and security concerns voiced by several past grand juries, including the most recent.