Supervisors Vow to Move Promptly on Crowded Jails

Alarmed at the chronic and worsening overcrowding of the county’s jails, San Diego County supervisors Tuesday declared a “state of emergency” and vowed to move forward promptly with a series of measures to provide more jail space.

The Board of Supervisors also voted unanimously to order the county’s staff to return in two weeks with a way to obtain space for nine Superior Court and three Municipal Court judges already approved for San Diego by the state Legislature.

Although the declaration of an emergency carries with it no legal punch, the supervisors said they hoped it would put the public, state officials and the county’s own staff on notice that the county’s jails are in crisis and that drastic action is needed.

“I don’t think the public understands how bad the problem is,” Supervisor Brian Bilbray said. “The perception that we need to go out and arrest the criminals may be fine and dandy. . . . We need to find a place to put this person once he’s arrested.”

The board ordered Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey to work with Sheriff John Duffy on an emergency plan Duffy has developed to provide room for as many as 600 inmates by October at the Descanso jail camp and the Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee. The two officials are scheduled to return to the board with details by March 11.

Duffy said his plan is the result of a “brainstorming session” he held Monday with his top managers as the county jails, designed to hold 1,684 inmates, had 2,778. The County Jail in Chula Vista held 600 inmates Tuesday--triple its designed capacity.

Duffy said he envisioned a “fast-track” building program that would cut through bidding and purchasing regulations and shorten or skip normal environmental reviews. He said he expected to propose a barracks-type construction.

But all of Tuesday’s activity seemed to do little to advance the issue beyond where it stood in December, when the board approved in concept a $420-million jail and courthouse expansion and delayed a decision on how to pay for it.

Board members clashed again Tuesday on the same issue that hung them up two months ago: whether it would be better to finance the expansion with a long-term debt through the sale of government bonds and other means, or pay for it in cash with the proceeds of a temporary sales tax increase, which would have to be approved by the voters.

Supervisor Susan Golding won the board’s approval to explore a grab bag of techniques--from selling bonds to increasing the surcharge on parking fines--which together could raise a one-time sum of $3.2 million, plus another $5.6 million annually over a period of years. Some of that money would be committed to an expansion of Juvenile Hall and the remainder would be put in a fund to finance other court and jail projects.

But that $5.6 million a year represents a small portion of the $58 million it would cost annually to finance the debt on the entire $420-million construction program. As a result, Supervisor George Bailey has called for a temporary half-penny-per-dollar sales tax increase to enable the county to pay for the new courts and jails in cash over a five-year period.

The board voted 4 to 1, with Supervisor Paul Eckert dissenting, to support state legislation that would allow the county to place the sales tax issue before the voters and to direct the county counsel to prepare language that might appear in such a ballot measure. Despite the lopsided vote, it appeared Tuesday that Bailey’s proposal is doomed for 1986, because three supervisors said they will not put the issue on the June ballot and Bailey himself said he does not want the issue on the ballot in November.

Eckert voted against even the limited action before the board Tuesday, saying a similar sales tax increase to pay for transportation projects should go on the ballot first. Golding and Leon Williams agreed to ask the Legislature for permission to put the court and jails issue before the voters but said they had no interest in placing a measure on the June ballot. Bilbray sided with Bailey but predicted that such a measure would have “a snowball’s chance in hell” of being approved by the required two-thirds majority of the voters.

Golding said putting the issue to the voters in June would undermine the county’s attempts to obtain funds from the state to pay for new jails.

“Unfortunately, counties that take care of their needs are frequently ignored,” Golding said. “It may not be rational or fair, but unfortunately that’s the way the process works in Sacramento.”

Williams said voters would reject Bailey’s sales tax proposal, and he said he “would be embarrassed to go to the voters with something I was sure they were going to defeat.”

But Bailey insisted that the measure could be passed with a quick and efficient campaign that would be supported by judges, law enforcement agencies, neighborhood watch groups and others. He called Golding’s approach of financing the construction through public debt, rather than a tax increase, “the Republican way.”

“I don’t want to saddle my grandchildren with $400 million of debt and whatever it would take year after year to pay for that,” he said.

Bilbray, though he said he doubted that a sales tax increase would be passed by the voters, said he thought the board was obligated to move forward with such a plan after declaring the jail situation to be an emergency.

“It’s hard to declare an emergency and then say we’re going to tie a hand behind our back, or tying the public’s hand behind their back,” Bilbray said. “We have a moral obligation to back up our declaration with as much action as possible.”

Several of the supervisors expressed frustration at the slow pace of the county staff’s work on the courts and jail financing issue. Eckert and Golding said they expected a detailed solution to the emergency court space problem Tuesday, not the general list of options provided by the staff. The board cut short a report on the issue and ordered that a space for the courtrooms already approved be found within two weeks.