New Costs, Slim Revenue Pinch Small Counties

Tehama County prosecutors, faced with substantial court costs for a notorious sex slave case, considered plea bargaining to save money for their financially troubled county.

Cameron Hooker, a mill worker accused of abducting and holding a young woman as his slave for seven years, might have received a prison term of only three or four years, instead of as much as 100, for pleading guilty to reduced charges.

The plea could have saved the county $100,000 in trial costs, Tehama County Dist. Atty. Jim Lang estimated.

The state attorney general’s office intervened to forbid plea bargaining as a way to save money in the heavily publicized case.

Although the trial will be held in San Mateo County, most costs will be borne by Tehama County, where the alleged crimes occurred.

It may be one of the most dramatic of cost-saving steps being considered by a number of counties faced with mounting expenses they cannot escape while lacking a corresponding jump in revenues.

“You have a whole region in crisis up here,” said Martin Nichols, Butte County’s chief administrative officer.

Others estimate that as many as half of California’s 58 counties may be in fiscal hot water in a lingering demonstration of the effects of 1978’s property tax-cutting Proposition 13.

Nichols was one of eight county representatives who met last week with Senate Republican Leader James W. Nielsen of Woodland to seek help with budget problems.

“Part of our frustration is trying to get people in Sacramento and elsewhere in the state to understand our problems,” Nichols said.

Lawmakers passed a bill last year to provide stable long-term financing for local governments, but it did not address what county administrators say is their real trouble--the open-ended criminal and welfare costs that the law requires them to pay without any open-ended way to raise revenues.

Several counties are considering cutbacks in workers, fire stations, libraries and law enforcement in the 1985-86 budgets.

Nichols said new money Butte County received under last year’s long-term financing bill was entirely offset by the county’s share of a state-ordered increase in welfare benefit payments.

A proposed cut of nearly 10% in Butte County’s roughly 1,000-member work force would affect virtually all areas of county services, including the probation and sheriff’s offices, libraries and fire protection.

After passage of Proposition 13, counties were left with little option for handling new costs. They can increase motel room assessments, but there are relatively few motels in hard-hit rural areas.

Troubles within the agricultural community are partly to blame for small counties’ fiscal problems, because drops in agricultural land values have lowered property tax revenues.

The state budget for 1985-86 newly signed by Gov. George Deukmejian does not address the issue.

An 11th-hour addition of $500,000 was included to pay costs of the attention-grabbing mass murder investigation in Calaveras County, but county budget officers whose problems do not generate big headlines say they are caught in a squeeze that no one is paying much attention to.

“Half of California’s 58 counties are in serious financial trouble with no immediate remedies in sight,” said Larry Naake, executive director of the County Supervisors Assn. of California.

Less than two weeks away from a new fiscal year, county supervisors throughout the state are cutting the number of public safety employees, trimming criminal prosecution staffs, abandoning roads and eliminating what remains of such discretionary programs as libraries, parks and recreation, he said.

Naake said that Fresno County supervisors accepted a budget last week that reduces county jobs, that Glenn County faces a layoff of 38 employees to cope with a $1.6-million shortfall and that Shasta County is preparing to eliminate 175 positions.

In Tehama County, welfare costs have increased by 22%, and a rash of murders has burdened the criminal justice system.

“Things keep getting worse for Tehama County,” Naake said. “There is only one jailer per shift for 90 County Jail inmates, and the sheriff’s deputies may be driving the same patrol cars for at least one more year, even though these cars already have as much as 180,000 rough miles on them.”

Others say that Naake’s association is spreading the word too late for much state help in the budget year that begins in only a week.

“Everybody had heard there were problems out there, but there wasn’t really much of a push to say, ‘Hey, this is serious,’ ” said Jim Branham of Nielsen’s office.

Further help--in the form of new authority to raise taxes or a shift to the state of some cost burdens--will come only with the kind of intense public pressure that led to a hefty increase for schools, Branham said.

“We don’t get cards and letters from folks out there telling us to send more money to counties,” he said.