Prison Bill Is Finally OKd, Sent to Governor : Measure Authorizing 2 L.A. County Lockups Passed by Assembly After Last-Minute Accord

The Assembly, following last-minute negotiations with Gov. George Deukmejian, passed and sent to the governor’s desk Thursday long-delayed legislation authorizing construction of Los Angeles County’s first state prisons--one on the city’s Eastside and a second west of Lancaster.

Passage came on a vote of 58 to 17 after a small group of inner-city Democrats nearly succeeded in defeating the bill for the second time in two days. They backed down, however, after aides to Deukmejian agreed in a phone call to the Assembly floor to consider a third prison site north of Gorman.

Separate Bill on 3rd Site

As explained to legislators, that site, on uninhabited state-owned land in the high desert community of Hungry Valley, would be named in a separate bill that would be introduced after the Legislature returns in August from its summer recess. If passed by the Legislature, the bill would authorize environmental studies on all three sites and give Deukmejian authority to select either both the Eastside and Lancaster sites, or build one larger prison near Gorman, according to the bill’s author, Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside). Deukmejian, however, according to an aide, had a different interpretation of the compromise, feeling it gave him authority to select any two of the three sites.

Nevertheless, Deukmejian, who has campaigned for nearly two years for a prison in Los Angeles County and strongly favored the Eastside site, hailed the bill’s passage as “a tremendous victory for public safety and fairness.” A spokesman said the governor will sign the bill “in the next few days.”

The governor immediately ordered the Department of Corrections to take steps to transfer inmates to two prisons in San Diego and near Stockton that were required by law to remain unoccupied until the Los Angeles prison dispute had been resolved. Opening the two prisons will provide space for an estimated 4,000 inmates.

“This important step to relieve the pressure of severe overcrowding is a result of the spirit of compromise that existed in both houses of the Legislature,” Deukmejian said in a prepared statement. “I am pleased that the need to maintain public safety finally took precedence over partisan politics.”

Democrats who initially held up the bill expressed hope that Deukmejian would eventually accept the wisdom of building only one prison in the Hungry Valley area. That would mean scrapping controversial proposals for prisons near the heavily Latino and Democratic community of Boyle Heights and near the largely Republican and rapidly urbanizing area west of Lancaster.

However, those who continue to oppose the bill said they are convinced that Deukmejian will select the Eastside location regardless of what the studies show.

“He’s been adamant and stubborn about that site,” said Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), the Legislature’s most vocal critic of the Eastside prison. Contending that some lawmakers traded their votes on the prison bill for favorable consideration from the governor on other matters, Torres added: “This was a tremendous loss. . . . I do not think this was a compromise at all.”

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina, who formerly represented the Eastside site in the Assembly, denounced the Assembly action as “a lot of funny wheeling and dealing. I do not understand how they could have passed out such an inadequate bill.”

She said that she would introduce a motion in the City Council today urging the city to file suit against the state.

Passage of the bill was a major victory for Presley, who has doggedly carried prison legislation for Deukmejian for nearly two years. During that time, Presley’s bills were alternately passed by both houses only to be rejected in subsequent partisan bickering.

When it appeared by midday Thursday that the Assembly was about to dump the bill for the second time in two days, Presley called the governor’s office from the Assembly floor 10 minutes before the session was scheduled to adjourn and convinced Deukmejian to publicly announce his support for a compromise.

“Sometimes things happen in the last few minutes that couldn’t happen in 10 months,” Presley later said.

During the last year, Deukmejian had refused to negotiate personally on any aspect of the bill with the 120 members of the Senate and Assembly. And when it appeared that a deal was struck, Assemblyman Phillip D. Wyman (R-Tehachapi), gleefully announced that “the 121st vote was finally cast.”

Wyman, whose district includes the Lancaster site, had tried unsuccessfully for two days to persuade the Assembly to pass a similar compromise only to be rebuffed by Republicans as well as Democrats, partly out of concern that Deukmejian would veto the bill with that provision.

The compromise was so hastily struck that it was not committed to paper and aides to Deukmejian and Presley later disagreed over the interpretation.

Presley said it was never contemplated that the governor could simply pick any two of the three sites for the new prisons. Instead, he maintained, the compromise requires deciding between one large prison in the high desert area or two prisons that impact equally on the Republican area of Lancaster and the Democratic Eastside.

Kevin Brett, Deukmejian’s press secretary, said the governor “is willing to discuss” the dispute but stands by his interpretation.

Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti said the Senate would reject the third site alternative if it allowed the governor to build near the Democratic Eastside while sparing Republicans in the Antelope Valley by selecting the uninhabited Hungry Valley site.

“That was already rejected per se in the Senate and it would be rejected again,” Roberti said.

Torres added that the key to any compromise is “equal pain” for Republicans and Democrats. “What pain is there in the (high) desert?” he asked.

Regardless of the fate of the third prison alternative, Deukmejian now is empowered to move forward on the Eastside and Lancaster prisons since they are included in the bill sent to his desk.

Besides delays from threatened court battles, environmental reviews of each site are expected to take at least a year.

The prison contemplated for the Eastside would be on a 20-acre site southeast of Olympic Boulevard and Santa Fe Avenue. Corrections officials contemplate building a 1,450-bed prison there, mainly to be used for processing new inmates.

The bill would allow the state to purchase the Eastside property immediately and hold it until the environmental study is completed. That property is currently targeted for an industrial park, however, and owners of the land have vowed to wage a legal battle against condemnation.

By contrast, the Lancaster site, which is planned for a 2,200-bed medium-security prison, would not be purchased until the environmental studies are completed. The prison would be adjacent to land that is proposed for residential development.

Together, the cost of the two prisons is expected to exceed $325 million.

One key feature of the bill sent to the governor’s desk is that neither the Eastside nor the Lancaster prison could open without completion of the other.