Golding Shelves Bid to Sue U.S. Over Spending on Aliens

San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding on Tuesday withdrew her controversial proposal that the county sue the U.S. government to recover millions of dollars spent by the county to arrest illegal aliens and provide health services for them.

Golding said that she intends to refine the proposal and re-introduce it for the board’s debate next month, after she meets with the county counsel, a private attorney and various community groups.

“I am hopeful of developing a strategy, which would be partly political and partly administrative, to complement the suit,” Golding said. The renewed strategy includes putting additional political pressure on the federal government and asking the supervisors “to try additional administrative remedies” in Washington.

Golding’s lawsuit proposal raised considerable controversy when she announced it last week. She charged that legal residents are going without adequate services because money is being spent by law enforcement agencies to arrest and prosecute illegal aliens who commit crimes. In addition, Golding charged that the county is spending millions of dollars on health services provided to aliens and their families.

She proposed suing the federal government for $23 million to recover funds paid by the county because of illegal aliens during the last five years. However, Golding’s proposal came under immediate attack from some Latino community leaders and groups, many of them charging that the lawsuit and the rhetoric behind it were racist.

On Monday, Golding said that she had discussed her proposal with several groups and individuals, including Latinos, before announcing it last week. According to Golding, the people she talked to were supportive of the idea. But she declined to name them.

As part of her new strategy, Golding said that she will meet with more community groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, local taxpayer groups and Latino leaders to further discuss the possibility of filing a suit.

Golding complained about the negative publicity that the proposal has brought her, which resulted in part from some incorrect statistics that she used in proposing the suit. Despite the publicity, Golding said that she has received about 100 calls about the lawsuit, only two of them opposing it.

“I don’t think that I’m asking for anything unreasonable. I simply want the federal government to adopt responsibility for the county’s law enforcement and health costs in dealing with undocumented aliens,” Golding said.

She added that her biggest complaint is that the county does not benefit directly from taxes paid by illegal aliens to the federal government.

“The tax money we get from the federal government is not directly, or for the most part indirectly, for the county’s law enforcement or health costs. . . . I know that undocumented aliens contribute to the economy through the service industries and agriculture and pay taxes. But we’re not seeing this tax money,” Golding said.

Last week, Golding rejected three county studies done in recent years that show illegal aliens paying more in taxes than they get in local services. She argued that the studies are outdated because of a sharp increase in the number of aliens living in the county.