Bill Authorizing Eastside, Rural Prisons Advances

Over objections from the Deukmejian Administration, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved legislation on Monday that would authorize both an urban and a rural prison in Los Angeles County.

For two years, the bill’s author, Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside), has led the legislative fight on behalf of Gov. George Deukmejian to build a prison on Los Angeles’ Eastside, near downtown. On Monday he wearily told the committee, “I think we are as close as we’ll ever get” to a compromise, despite Deukmejian’s opposition to his bill.

Conceding that the bill is not satisfactory to everyone, he asked that it be approved and moved to the Senate floor so that in the future “hopefully, finally, finally (we can) find a solution to this long-festering problem.”

The committee complied and sent the legislation, reflecting compromises sought by both sides, to the full Senate on a 7-0 vote.

Later, gubernatorial spokeswoman Donna Lucas repeated Deukmejian’s opposition to the measure, warning that “the governor is expected not to look favorably on it.”

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), a fierce opponent of a prison near downtown, said that although Presley’s measure represents a “major attempt” at compromise, “I’m not totally signed off on it.”

“If I had my druthers, I would have no (Eastside) prison at all. But the name of the game is compromise,” the Senate leader said.

The bill, one of three Los Angeles prison bills in the Legislature, is an attempt to break the political gridlock created last summer when Senate Democrats rejected the governor’s program to build a prison in an industrial area near the heavily Latino neighborhoods on the Eastside of Los Angeles.

Further aggravating the stalemate is a law, passed in an effort to force Los Angeles County to accept a prison, stating that two nearly completed prisons near San Diego and Stockton cannot be opened until a Los Angeles County site is selected. Although it contributes nearly 40% of the convicts to the state corrections system, Los Angeles County has no state prison.

The governor has maintained that the prison is needed to ease severe overcrowding at other state penal institutions. Senate Democrats have argued, among other things, that the facility would be too close to schools and residential areas and has not been thoroughly examined for potential adverse environmental consequences.

2 Environmental Reports

Presley’s measure proposes an Eastside penitentiary of 1,450 beds and a 2,200-bed prison near the existing county-operated Mira Loma Jail in the desert west of Lancaster.

The bill would allow the state to purchase Eastside land for a prison, but construction could not begin until completion of an environmental impact study and until any environmental lawsuits were settled. An environmental report would be required for the Mira Loma prison.

If environmental examinations found either site to be unacceptable, an alternative location would be proposed within six months. The measure also would prohibit one prison from being built without the other.

Lucas, who described Deukmejian as “unenthusiastic about the bill at this point,” said the 640-acre Mira Loma location has not been fully studied as a prison site and the bill proposed no alternatives.

Pat Kenady of the state Department of Corrections told the committee, among other things, that the Administration opposes the bill because it would reduce the number of cells for the downtown prison from the 1,700 proposed by the governor to 1,450, a number favored by Roberti.

‘No Rational Basis’

He said there was “no rational basis” for reducing the capacity of the proposed prison. Presley noted, however, that with some double celling of convicts, the Eastside facility could handle 2,000 inmates.

Under the legislation, the rural facility would be built in a legislative district represented by Republican Sen. Newton Russell of Glendale, and the urban prison would be in an area represented by Democratic Sen. Art Torres of Los Angeles.