Roberti Accepts Challenge to Find Sites for Prisons

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti, accepting Gov. George Deukmejian’s challenge to come up with his own Los Angeles County prison proposal, said Tuesday that he will offer at least three alternative locations for penitentiaries in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys.

Expressing an urgency to “get this issue behind us,” the Los Angeles Democrat said during a breakfast session with The Times Sacramento Bureau that he is willing to consider a second, “scaled-down” prison where the governor wants it, on Los Angeles’ Eastside.

But Roberti’s legislation, to be introduced next week, would weigh prison sites on the basis of factors such as land cost, willingness to sell and proximity to homes. This would tend to favor a rural, Republican area of the county over the heavily urbanized and Democratic site Deukmejian prefers.

“If I were the only vote, we wouldn’t be discussing (the Eastside prison) at all,” Roberti acknowledged.

The Senate leader, while refusing to specify the exact locations of his alternative prison sites, expressed hope that his plan ultimately will lead to a compromise. But he said that standing in the way is a governor who is “too thin-skinned” and too stubborn to negotiate.

“The normal give and take of politics the governor takes too seriously,” Roberti declared.

Roberti’s statements were the first indication of a legislative compromise since the middle of last month, when Deukmejian said he would consider building two prisons in Los Angeles County to defuse claims that he chose the heavily Latino Eastside because of its overwhelmingly Democratic registration. The governor, however, said such a plan would be acceptable only if it did not delay construction of the Eastside prison and came “in writing” from Roberti.

Both sides have been hurling insults at each other in an increasingly personal fight that began last year when the Senate, under pressure from Latino activists and Eastside community groups, abandoned its support of the governor’s plan and narrowly blocked purchase of the prison property, about two miles southeast of the Civic Center.

The fight has become so bitter at times that Roberti said he began “to get the feeling” that Deukmejian was carrying a grudge against him. Behind the feud, he speculated, were several incidents, including the Senate’s rejection three years ago of Deukmejian’s friend and finance director, Michael Franchetti, and more recently, Roberti’s own campaign speeches accusing the governor of taking contributions from toxic polluters.

“The governor takes it personally,” Roberti said. “It’s hard to run a state that way.”

Deukmejian’s current fight with state school Supt. Bill Honig over educational funding is another example of the governor’s “thin skin,” he said.

As for the prison dispute, Roberti said the governor has shown a particularly stubborn side in his refusal to back away from the Eastside proposal, despite statements from the property owners that they will not sell to the state.

Deukmejian has threatened to take the land through condemnation. But Roberti derided that as a “very un-Republican” course of action that would have wide implications.

“You cannot create a situation where if I don’t get my way, I will seize your property,” he said.

The Senate leader said the details of his legislation are still being ironed out and that the bill will probably undergo further changes when presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee next week.

Several approaches are still being discussed, he added, including the question of whether to abandon the Eastside location altogether or to construct a smaller prison there and a larger facility on one of the alternative sites in the Antelope or Santa Clarita valleys.

Roberti had earlier named Castaic as a likely place for a prison. But he refused to specify other sites until a final bill is crafted.

In a related development Tuesday, Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) introduced legislation that would set up a commission to find ways of reducing California’s burgeoning prison and jail populations.

Members of the 19-member commission would consider alternatives to incarceration, including shorter terms for nonviolent offenders, expansion of rehabilitation programs and such controversial alternatives as house arrest and public apologies in the case of some minor offenses.

There are now about 60,000 inmates in state prisons, and projections indicate that the figure could grow to 100,000 by 1991.