Polanco Joins Panel--East L.A. Prison Voted

In a telling display of the power of his office, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) on Thursday placed a newly elected lawmaker on a key committee, which then breathed life into a controversial plan to build a prison in East Los Angeles.

Just hours after he was sworn into office, Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) provided the crucial vote on a bill before the Assembly Public Safety Committee. The bill would permit the construction of a 1,500-bed, medium-security facility two miles southeast of the Civic Center, not far from Polanco’s own district.

Less than three weeks ago, the same committee rejected the East Los Angeles site backed by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian in favor of another Los Angeles County location, in a rural area north of Castaic.

Committee Changed

But Brown changed the composition of the committee--replacing Assemblyman Robert J. Campbell (D-Richmond) with Polanco, who was picked by voters in a special election Tuesday to fill a legislative vacancy.

Campbell told The Times that he had pledged to oppose the downtown site. Polanco’s vote for the prison measure by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) proved to be the deciding one in the 4-2 committee action.

Some legislative sources, who asked that they not be named, suggested that Brown’s appointment of Polanco to the committee was at least partly politically motivated, an attempt to punish another Democrat, Assemblywoman Gloria Molina. Molina led the fight against the downtown site, which is in her district.

Brown had backed Polanco in Tuesday’s election; Molina had supported Polanco’s most serious challenger, Mike Hernandez.

On election night, a Polanco associate who requested anonymity said to a Times reporter, “Gloria might just find that prison smack in her district to teach her a lesson.”

However, both Brown and Polanco denied that either the committee appointment or the prison vote was in any way tied to a squabble among Democrats.

“He (Polanco) voted for a prison that was part of the governor’s package,” Brown said through a spokesman. “It was not a recrimination against Gloria Molina. It was not a condition of (Polanco’s) appointment.”

Mind Not Made Up

After the committee vote, Polanco explained that he had not made up his mind on a site for a prison in Los Angeles County. He argued that the Legislature will have other opportunities to decide where the prison should be built--alluding to the fact that there is another bill, one naming the Castaic site, still before the Assembly.

“What I voted for is to allow the process to continue,” he said.

An angry Molina contended that Polanco had promised to oppose the downtown prison site during the election campaign just a few weeks before.

“It’s a betrayal of his own community,” she said.

Was Polanco put on the committee to supply the needed vote for the East Los Angeles location? “I’ll let you make that judgment,” Molina said. “It looks like it to me.”

In testimony before the committee, Molina pointed out that a large number of civic groups within her district opposed the East Los Angeles site. Although in an industrial area, the location is within a mile of a heavily populated section of Los Angeles, which Molina contended already has more than its share of county and federal jail facilities.

Since the 1970s, the Legislature has attached language to various prison bills calling for the construction of a prison in Los Angeles County. But there has been no agreement on a site for such a facility.

The committee action may signal an end to the dispute.

“We just decided to resolve the issue,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), who is a member of Brown’s inner circle. “The governor had wanted a prison. . . . We’ve got to get the prisons built.”

Ironically, just before the vote on locating a new prison not far from his own district, Polanco supported an amendment to another bill that would bar the construction of a new Orange County jail within three miles of Disneyland or two miles of Anaheim Stadium--ruling out a seven-acre site chosen by the Orange County Board of Supervisors.