Compromise Removes Site Restrictions From Jail Bill

In a compromise intended to stave off a threatened veto, an Assembly committee Wednesday stripped away controversial provisions of a $495-million bond allocation bill that gave Los Angeles and San Diego County cities virtual veto power over potential new jail sites within their boundaries.

The compromise, written by Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista), says that county boards of supervisors all over the state must adopt master plans regarding jails and prisons, and give consideration to oversaturation in certain neighborhoods when choosing sites for new jails.

Peace’s compromise was praised by a key adviser to Gov. George Deukmejian and by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), the bill’s author, who said it removed the governor’s major objection. Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), who had added a provision to the bill last month to eliminate Santee as a potential site for a new San Diego County jail, said he, too, found the compromise acceptable.

“It was like a love fest,” Presley said after the 23-0 vote in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

San Diego County Supervisor George Bailey, who represents East County and Santee, said: “The placing of jails is not the cities’ responsibility. There’s no one who likes a jail next door to them if they know it’s coming before it gets there. I think we’ve been responsible (in choosing sites). . . . It was setting a precedent allowing the cities to tell the counties where they could build their facilities.”

Peace’s compromise left intact the so-called “Mickey Mouse amendment” aimed at blocking a new Orange County jail near Anaheim Stadium and Disneyland. A lobbyist for the Orange County Board of Supervisors said there may still be an attempt to remove that provision before the measure is sent to the governor--perhaps in a two-house conference committee. But Stephen Blankenship, deputy secretary of Deukmejian’s Cabinet-level Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, said it appeared the Orange County restrictions might stay in the bill.

“The Orange County people are going to have to make their case to the governor,” Blankenship said. “We’ll just let each side make its case.”

Presley’s bill, which now goes to the full Assembly, outlines how the $495 million in bond money approved by 67% of California voters last month will be divided among the state’s 58 counties. State legislators, more accustomed to fighting over money than the locations of new jails, added all three provisions dealing with local jail-siting controversies during a hearing last month before the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

First, Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove), accusing the Orange County supervisors of having made a “back room deal” to force a new jail on Anaheim, introduced a narrowly constructed amendment to eliminate a proposed site directly across the Orange Freeway from Anaheim Stadium--the home of the Los Angeles Rams and the California Angels.

Then Stirling added an amendment saying that, before San Diego County supervisors could build a jail within any of the county’s 17 cities, they would need approval of the city council involved. Stirling was upset that the supervisors had ordered an environmental impact report for a new men’s jail in Santee adjacent to the County Jail at Las Colinas, which houses women. Santee officials strongly oppose a new jail there.

Finally, Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) added a provision identical to Stirling’s for the more than 80 cities in Los Angeles County.

Peace said his compromise seemed like “a reasonable way to approach the concerns people have from all sides.”

“It is the kind of statewide policy that should have been put into law years ago,” he added.

He said it would be discriminatory to give city councils veto power because residents of unincorporated areas would not have the same political muscle.

“In the real world, we all know what the result of that policy would be,” he said. “You’d never be able to build the jail, except in unincorporated areas.”

Stirling, who had angered supervisors with his amendment last month, said Peace’s approach still addresses his major concern: “putting everybody on a level playing field.”