Price Tag on Intake Jail Sparks New Legislation

Still only half finished, the $60.2-million intake and release center next to the main Orange County Jail in Santa Ana has become so expensive it has inspired legislation designed to hold down the cost of future county correctional facilities throughout the state.

State officials say the new facility, which legislative critics have called a “Taj Mahal” and a “Cadillac jail,” is the most expensive jail construction project, for its size, ever undertaken in California.

As a result, a bill now awaiting Gov. George Deukmejian’s signature directs the state Board of Corrections to set guidelines for new jails based on the average cost per bed and cost per square foot of recent jail projects around the state.

Although they concede that the center is not an ordinary jail, state officials say the 384-bed intake center is costing more than $156,000 a bed, while maximum-security jails around the state are being built for an average of $55,000 a bed.

Orange County officials dispute the state figures and say they are unfair.

The two-story intake facility, scheduled to open next April, will house men and women inmates before they are sentenced and will serve as the central drop-off and pickup point for those headed for jail, as well as those being bailed out or otherwise released, county officials say. Inmates will be diagnosed for medical conditions there and screened to determine eligibility for minimum-security facilities and diversion programs.

State corrections officials, who have defended the new Orange County intake center, agree much of its costs are a result of the fact that “it is a highly specialized facility with an abnormal amount of intake space.”

But in recent weeks, the Board of Corrections staff has been raising questions about everything from the center’s computerized booking and tracking system to the number of parking spaces and the size of the project’s construction shack before approving payments toward the state’s $49-million share of the project.

Questions Normal

Corrections officials say it is normal for questions to be raised about which items in large capital projects are eligible for state funds. And they say that is especially so in this case, since legislative approval for state funding was granted long before final plans for the 265-square-foot center were complete.

The “eligibility issues,” as they are called, have nothing to do with the project’s cost or legislative politics, they say. Questions are being asked not to determine whether an item costs too much, but whether it is something on which state money should be spent under the legislation authorizing state funding, said Edgar Smith, deputy executive officer of the Board of Corrections.

“I’m trying to straighten out the misinformation,” Smith said. “People are comparing apples and oranges.”

Unfortunately for Orange County officials, who say they would like to put the cost issue “to bed,” comparisons are not easy. Los Angeles County has the only jail system in California with a similar intake facility, and it was built decades ago. The state prison system has not built a new reception center since one was added to the Vacaville penitentiary in 1957.

Smith said that only the state’s largest counties, with a complex network of jail facilities, would have need for an intake and release center like the one under construction in Santa Ana.

So far, Orange County has received only $13.9 million from the state for the project, while it has already exceeded its own $10.2-million minimum share by around $400,000, records show.

Meeting Requested

State officials, who have asked for a face-to-face meeting later this month with county officials, sent a $2.1-million check for the project to Santa Ana last week. But they have warned county officials that future invoices might be held up “until all of the outstanding issues . . . have been resolved.”

One sticky point of contention is a $431,000 computer system that county jailers say they need to book, trace and maintain records on the thousands of inmates in county jails each day. Assistant Orange County Sheriff Jerry Kranz said the county has no intention of scrapping the system, even if the state refuses to pay for it.

County officials say they see little chance of losing a significant amount of state funding for the intake center. Altogether, the eligibility issues being raised amount to about 1% of the total project, said Norb Puff, a senior analyst with the county administrative office.

Already Half-Built

“We believe our case is valid,” Puff said. “No matter how you look at it, the state bought off on our facility . . . over two years ago. It’s all kind of academic at this point. It is already half-built.”

County officials say the costs for their new center wouldn’t seem so high if the state had comparative figures that take into account its uniqueness.

Three-fourths of the first floor will be a large holding area, where there could be several hundred inmates at any time, Kranz said. It also includes 94 medical beds that state officials do not count in establishing the facility’s capacity, Kranz said.

“They strictly divide by 384 (the overnight lock-down capacity),” Kranz said. “Sure, the costs are going to be a little different.”

The measure calling for new cost guidelines for county jails in the state got little attention in the Legislature. It was included in the same $495-million jail construction bill as the so-called “Mickey Mouse amendment,” which was written to discourage a new Orange County jail near Anaheim Stadium and Disneyland. The bill is now awaiting Gov. George Deukmejian’s signature.

In the expectation that Deukmejian will sign the measure, authored by state Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside), corrections officials already have awarded a consulting contract for setting the state guidelines on jail costs. The contract went to Kitchell CEM, the same Sacramento-based architectural firm that designed the Orange County intake center.

A report from Kitchell CEM is expected by November, Smith said.

Recommended Maximums

Presley’s bill directs state officials to come up with recommended maximums on how much a jail bed and how much a square foot of jail space should cost. But the Legislature also directed corrections officials to consider “size, use, location and other relevant factors.” In recent years, jail-construction legislation has almost always called for a 75%-25% financing split between the state and the counties where the jails are located. As long as minimum standards are met, state officials have stayed out of the design of the county facilities, Smith said.

The new guidelines will not affect the Orange County intake center or other jail projects already under way. But the Legislature intends to make the cost guidelines the basis for state funding in the future, said Bob Franzoia, an aide to Presley.

Counties with jail projects that exceed the recommended maximums could end up assuming a larger share of the costs for future jail projects than they have in the past.

More Difficult to Fund

“What it means is (that) it is going to be more difficult to adequately fund a large urban jail facility,” Kranz said.

Orange County officials, who have been held in contempt of court for failing to live up to a federal judge’s 8-year-old order to ease jail overcrowding, will most certainly be among the counties seeking state financing for jail projects in coming years.

Even with the intake center and recent expansions at satellite jails in El Toro and Orange, county officials estimate they will need to increase jail capacity by 8,000 beds during the next 15 years. The federal court case puts them under added pressure.

Even before the current Anaheim jail site controversy made its way to Sacramento, county officials had become veterans of bureaucratic and legislative battles here over jail funding.

In 1984, the Board of Corrections recommended turning down Orange County’s request for $50.2 million in state funds for the intake center. The board’s staff had used a formula that rewarded counties that had diversion programs for alcoholics and other so-called alternatives to incarceration.

Angered by the process, Supervisor Harriett Wieder, then chairwoman of the board, threatened to oppose a bond measure for jail funds on that year’s June ballot. And Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) pushed a bill through the Legislature to finance jail projects for Orange and several other counties that were left out, or shortchanged, in the initial screening process.

In the end, Orange County got all it had asked, and lobbyists for the county were dubbed “leaders of the dirty dozen” because of their aggressiveness in backing Robinson’s bill.