Deukmejian Waffles on Bond Issue for Local Jails

Highlighting the law-and-order theme that helped launch his political career, Gov. George Deukmejian toured a crowded Santa Clara County jail Tuesday where he told officials that, despite stepped-up enforcement, Californians still see crime as their major concern.

In response to questions, however, the Republican governor waffled on an earlier promise to support a bond issue to help communities pay the high cost of jail construction.

“We consider (the crime problem) extremely important, and we are as concerned about the overcrowding at the county jail level as we have been at the overcrowding of state prisons,” Deukmejian said.

Asked about his pledge to support a jail bond issue, the governor said it will have to compete for priority with a long list of other programs that also need voter-approved financing.

“We want to make sure they don’t fail (at the ballot box) because we’ve gone too far on too many bond issues all at once,” he said.

The governor recently called for a $200-million bond issue to clean up toxic waste sites and signed a bill that places on next year’s ballot an $850-million bond issue for low-interest veterans home loans.

In July, when he was seeking votes in the Legislature for a controversial emergency state prison building program, the Republican governor said he would support putting a major jail construction bond issue on the ballot. The Legislature approved his emergency prison program.

Now local officials are anxious for Deukmejian to follow through with support for more jail construction money. Although voters approved two major bond issues in 1982 and 1984 for prison and jail construction, much of the initial allocation went to a small number of counties, including Los Angeles, frustrating officials whose needs are still unmet.

Just as the lack of prison space has caused political problems for the Deukmejian Administration, the crisis in providing jail cells could prove embarrassing for a governor who repeatedly has sounded the call to get tough on crime.

Dozens of counties are under court order to improve their jails, but only a few say they have the financial resources to support costly construction programs. Unless more jail space becomes available locally, judges are likely to order early inmate releases, a policy opposed by Deukmejian and other conservatives.

That could undercut Deukmejian’s use of the law-and-order theme to pick away at the record of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, his expected Democratic rival in next year’s gubernatorial race.

In past months, Deukmejian has accused Bradley of not providing Los Angeles with a large enough police force. Bradley, in turn, has called the governor’s prison construction program “a fiasco.”

Tuesday’s tour of the Santa Clara County Jail underlined the seriousness of the problems faced by local law enforcement.

Sheriff Robert Winter, who described the county’s central jail as “totally antiquated,” has been under court order to improve conditions. Several years ago, voters turned down a local ballot measure that would have provided money for new jail facilities. At the same time, the county’s jail population has ballooned to about 4,000 inmates from about 1,550 in 1978.

Recently, however, the county received about $46 million in state jail construction money to begin building a new detention facility in its civic center.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Al Noren, who was among officials accompanying Deukmejian on the tour, said other communities have not been so lucky.

“The public and politicians are reluctant to think about jails,” he said. “All of a sudden, we’ve found ourselves with this horrible overcrowding and, as a result, we can’t come up with the tremendous cost of catching up.”

In brief remarks, Deukmejian took credit for the fact that crime rates have begun leveling off after more than a decade of steady increases, saying jail overcrowding is the result of new get-tough policies.

A San Jose fund-raiser Tuesday night was expected to add about $100,000 to more than $3 million Deukmejian has collected for his still-undeclared race for a second term.