Panel Delays Bill Seeking Vote on Tax Hike to Build Jail

In what supporters said was a major setback, an Assembly committee put on hold Wednesday a bill that would ask Orange County residents to consider a half-cent sales tax increase next year to pay for a new central jail.

Instead, reluctant members of the Assembly Local Government Committee decided to lump the county measure, sponsored by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), with three similar bills and take them up as a package after legislators return from their summer break in mid-August.

Assemblyman Dominic L. Cortese (D-San Jose), chairman of the committee, said he wanted the delay to examine the jail tax bills to make sure they would pass constitutional muster if approved by the Legislature.

But Bergeson said the delay jeopardizes chances that the county tax question can be put before the voters on the June, 1990 ballot, as local political leaders had hoped.

Before the measure can be approved for the ballot, it must jump through several legislative hoops between the time lawmakers return from the break Aug. 21 and they adjourn for the year Sept. 15. And that is a daunting task during the hectic weeks known as the “end of session rush,” Bergeson said.

“If it had been approved today, we would have been virtually assured passage of the bill” on the floor, she said, adding that now the odds are more like only 30%.

Bergeson’s measure is considered by county officials as the only politically viable option to help solve the jail crowding crisis, which Sheriff Brad Gates has estimated will force him to give an early release to nearly 50,000 prisoners this year.

Gates and the county are under a federal court order to find new jail space.

The bill would ask county voters on the 1990 ballot whether money for new jails should come from a half-cent sales tax, which is estimated to generate $121 million a year.

Although the amount is not nearly enough for the $434 million in expansion and new facilities that are needed, county officials said it is crucial seed money to begin such upgrades.

Several times during Wednesday’s hearing, Bergeson and her county colleagues on the committee stressed that a delay in approving the sales tax proposal would mean that many more “rapists and murderers” would be prematurely released to county streets.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), a member of the committee, expressed frustration at what he said were delaying tactics by others on Cortese’s panel.

‘A Sense of Urgency’

“Are we going to have a sense of urgency here?” Ferguson asked. “You tell the senator to wait a little while. What do you mean by wait a little while?

“We have prisoners sleeping in hallways and shower rooms. You’re letting people go out on the street who shouldn’t be out on the street. They belong in prison.”

Cortese bristled at the criticism. “You don’t have the corner on sensitivity or concern,” he told Ferguson.

Cortese and others on the panel said they wanted another month to study the jail tax proposals to make sure that they could survive a court challenge in relation to a recent decision that has thrown a shadow over such sales tax schemes, all of which require only a simple majority to pass.

In March, a Superior Court judge overturned the 1988 election approving a half-cent sales tax for jails in San Diego County. San Diego voters had approved the tax by a thin majority: 50.6%.

S.D. Election Thrown Out

The judge threw out the election, challenged by the Libertarian Party, ruling that it had been designed to “purposely circumvent” a provision of Proposition 13 that requires a two-thirds approval by voters for special taxes--a margin that politicians concede is generally impossible to achieve.

Although San Diego’s tax failed on the first round of judicial review, several other counties have advanced similar proposals. Besides Orange County, Riverside, Los Angeles and Humboldt counties are asking the Legislature this year to authorize a half-cent sales tax increase.

Orange County officials, working with Bergeson, said they have fashioned their bill to avoid at least some the legal pitfalls that resulted in the San Diego decision. They are confident that such provisions as an independent county jails commission--the agency that would dispense the sales tax revenues--would pass constitutional muster if challenged in court.

Tried to Force a Vote

On a motion by Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), county committee members tried to force a vote on their jail tax bill and get it out of Cortese’s panel. But Cortese and several other key assemblymen on the 11-member committee abstained, thereby guaranteeing that the measure would fail to get the six votes needed to advance to the Assembly floor.

Cortese said he will take up all of the jail tax bills at the panel’s Aug. 23 meeting, where lawmakers may combine them into one bill. He said such a move could strengthen their chances of surviving almost certain court challenges.

“Nobody has ever pointed out to me the failure of taking our time to do something right, rather than speed it up and doing it wrong and encourage the hodgepodge approach of what is going on here,” Cortese said.