Half-Cent Sales Tax Rise for Courtrooms, Jails on June Ballot

San Diego County voters may get a chance in June to decide whether to raise the sales tax half a penny on a dollar for five years to pay for a $420-million jail and courthouse construction program, the Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday.

The board voted 4-1, with Supervisor Susan Golding opposed, to place the measure on the June 3 ballot, subject to approval by the state Legislature.

The move represents the most dramatic effort yet by the board to resolve chronic overcrowding in the county’s jails and to cut judicial delays caused by a shortage of courtrooms. Two weeks ago, the board declared a “state of emergency” in the jail situation.

In Sacramento Tuesday, Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) introduced legislation that he said would allow San Diego to build the new jail and courts complex without imposing new taxes. The two actions apparently were taken independently.

Supervisor George Bailey, who proposed the tax increase, said local law enforcement and criminal justice agencies have been crippled by jail overcrowding that has triggered the release of criminals and suspects who would remain in custody if more cells were available.

“It is not feasible to even think . . . that the courts and police can do their job unless you give them the proper tools,” Bailey said. “That is what this is all about.”

San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender urged the board to put the sales tax measure on the ballot as soon as possible.

“I do not think we have time to wait until next year,” Kolender said. “I am pleading with you, telling you that the situation at this time is of astronomical, epidemic proportions. We are literally releasing thousands of people from that jail back onto the streets.”

Golding said she opposed the tax increase because she believed the county could find a way to pay for the jail and courthouse construction without a tax increase.

“Taxation and additional taxes upon our citizens have always been the easy way out,” Golding said. “If you can’t solve the problem--tax. The board has not yet exhausted all the possibilities for revenue sources.”

Although the issue probably will not be actively opposed by any local elected officials and is expected to attract little opposition from other quarters, Bailey and his colleagues are likely to have a tough job persuading the required two-thirds majority of the voters to vote for a new tax.

Even Supervisor Brian Bilbray, who voted with Bailey and Supervisors Leon Williams and Paul Eckert to place the measure on the ballot, has his doubts. He recently said he would give such a tax a “snowball’s chance in hell.”

Bailey, County Sheriff John Duffy and other criminal justice leaders have spent the last two weeks meeting among themselves and with others--including editors of the city’s major newspapers--in an attempt to build the base for a quick-strike campaign in the three months before the election.

So far, they have charted a campaign that will appeal to the public’s desire to be “tough on crime” by emphasizing that some of the money raised by the tax increase would go to build new jails, although as much as $340 million of the $420 million raised will pay for the construction of new courthouse buildings.

In addition, Duffy and his top aides increasingly have been making public statements and inviting press coverage about the conditions in the County Jail downtown and in five regional jails. Duffy has said the crowding in the regional jails is as bad as it was six years ago when a Superior Court judge ordered the downtown jail population capped at 750 inmates.

Bailey has said he also hopes to enlist the help of law enforcement groups, Neighborhood Watch members and grass-roots organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Norma Phillips, that organization’s national president and founder of MADD’s San Diego chapter, offered her support Tuesday. She said drunk drivers are not being punished enough because there are not enough jail cells to house them.

“The surety and severity of the punishment simply is not there,” she said. “We need the help of the citizens of San Diego County to put drunk drivers along with other criminals behind bars where they belong.”

As proposed by the county board, the measure would increase the sales tax from 6 cents to 6.5 cents per dollar for five years. If the county obtained other funds for criminal justice buildings in the meantime, the tax increase would expire sooner.

The money raised would be used to pay cash for major improvements that would be expected to last into the next century. The construction--including a 400-bed pretrial jail, and expansion of both Juvenile Hall and the downtown courthouse--would cost the county as much as $58 million a year for 30 years if it were financed with borrowed funds.

Under Stirling’s bill introduced Tuesday, a joint powers authority set up by the city and county could finance the needed government complex by constructing and leasing commercial office space and diverting to the new agency some of the fines and forfeiture revenues the city now gets from the courts.

The measure would create the San Diego Courthouse, Jail and Related Facilities Redevelopment Agency. The agency, he said, could develop a complex larger than the county needs, leasing some of the buildings at a profit. Stirling said he has discussed his idea with local officials but neither the city nor county has yet endorsed his proposal.

“We’re just looking for innovative ways to get the job done,” Stirling said.

Times staff writer Kenneth F. Bunting contributed to this story.