Jail-Tax Measure OKd by Panel, Goes to the Full Assembly

Attempts to find money for a new Orange County jail received a major boost Tuesday when a key Assembly committee narrowly voted to revive a measure that would ask local voters to approve a half-cent sales tax increase.

The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), was passed by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, but not before hours of furious behind-the-scenes politicking and intrigue that included the personal intervention of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and telephone calls by Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates.

“It was an interesting and colorful day,” said Larry Parrish, Orange County’s chief administrative officer, who monitored the progress of the bill from his office in Santa Ana. “I talked to the sheriff several times today. We talked about all the events, about rumors, stories and fanciful thinking.”

Consideration Today?

In the end, Bergeson saw her problem-plagued sales tax bill restored and sent to the full Assembly floor for consideration as early as today.

Bergeson’s bill would ask a majority of Orange County voters to approve a half-cent sales tax increase to generate $121 million annually and help fund the proposed $700-million central jail in Gypsum Canyon. If passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor, the measure could go before county voters as early as next June.

Just last week, Bergeson’s bill appeared to be in legislative limbo in an Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee. Chaired by Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles), the panel complained that the Bergeson bill was just a ruse to get around the strict provisions of Proposition 13, the landmark tax-cutting measure that requires two-thirds approval to implement a tax increase.

But by Tuesday, Roos suddenly reversed himself and put out the word that his subcommittee wanted to reconsider the matter--a change of heart that one Assembly source said was directly attributable to Gates.

The sheriff acknowledged Tuesday that he contacted Roos after Bergeson’s bill was left hanging last week.

“I picked up the phone and called Mike Roos, and I discussed all of these issues in a straight-forward way,” said Gates, who this spring emerged as a key law-enforcement community supporter of Roos’ landmark law banning the sale of assault weapons.

One of the issues that Gates said they discussed was the provision in the bill that would set up a new Orange County Jail Facilities Agency to collect and make decisions on how to spend the revenue from the proposed half-cent sales tax increase, if it is approved. As originally written by Bergeson--at the county’s request--the five-member board would consist of two county supervisors, two other Orange County elected officials and one private citizen.

After discussions with Gates, Roos crafted an amendment that would expand the new agency’s board to nine members. The additional members would be the sheriff, two local chiefs of police and an additional public member.

Gates acknowledged that he talked to Roos about the change but wouldn’t say whether he pushed to be on the board.

‘Any of Those’

“We discussed committee make-up,” the sheriff said. “I thought the committee should be as broad-based as possible, whether it is a five-member committee, a seven-member committee, a nine-member committee, any of those.”

Roos’ change also received the blessing of Speaker Brown, who said in an interview Tuesday that he believed the expanded board would make sure the new jail would not simply be an expansion of the current, overcrowded facility in Santa Ana, the Orange County seat and a heavily Latino community.

“It could be placed in the city of Santa Ana,” said Brown, explaining his concern. “Apparently, there has been a commitment that it wouldn’t be placed in Santa Ana, in the heart of the Hispanic community. . . . I wanted to make sure the amendments contained therein barred against the possibility.

“The Roos amendments provide an increased number of people on the site-selection committee, or whatever the control panel happens to be. And the people on the control panel have a commitment not to do it in Santa Ana, so I’m told.”

Wary of Recent Vote

Brown said he was wary of the recent Orange County supervisors’ vote to put the jail in Gypsum Canyon, near Anaheim Hills.

“They could change their minds tomorrow,” he said. “Nothing bars them from changing their minds.”

The Speaker said that Gates was among the people who had called his office last week, but that he had not spoken personally to the sheriff.

“I have not been on the front lines in conversation with any of these people. I’m just making decisions based on what is reported to me,” he added.

Another person who contacted Brown’s office was Santa Ana City Councilman Miguel Pulido, who has been one of the city’s most vocal critics of plans to put future jails in Santa Ana.

As it happened, Pulido flew to Sacramento on Tuesday and was present when Roos convened the Assembly subcommittee meeting. Pulido said he flew to the state capital directly from a vacation in New York to help save the Bergeson bill.

“The sheriff said, ‘I need your help. You’ve got to help keep this bill alive, and you’re in a position to do something,’ ” Pulido related Tuesday. “So I contacted the Speaker’s office, Assemblyman Roos’ office and many folks, and started to try to work something that would keep the bill alive.”

Pulido was one of the few people in the hearing room Tuesday morning who didn’t appear stunned when Roos offered his amendments for an expanded board that would include Gates. The subcommittee moved the proposal to the full Ways and Means Committee for further consideration.

Talked to Roos, Pulido

At one point in the proceedings, Brown appeared in the committee room--a rarity--and pulled Roos and Pulido outside for a private chat. The Speaker later said he dropped by to check on the Roos amendments, and he predicted that the amended version of the Bergeson bill would pass the full Assembly.

But that was before people in Sacramento and in Orange County began burning up the telephone lines to the sheriff, trying to decipher just what had happened. Bergeson said she had at least two conversations with Gates; Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) said he had one, and Parrish said he, too, dialed up the sheriff.

“Yes, I was very concerned that anything that appeared to have an agenda other than getting us this bill was going to jeopardize us,” Parrish explained.

Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said he was disturbed about Roos’ proposal.

“The attempt to amend the bill in terms of the composition of the group comes as a shock to me,” he said. “Any amendment made to the bill at this point in time, particularly by those who have a personal interest or agenda in this matter, could complicate an already-difficult situation.”

Bergeson said Tuesday that she was unwilling to accept an expansion of the agency panel. Pringle, who represents Santa Ana, called the Roos amendments “political games.” Orange County lobbyist Dennis E. Carpenter said such an expansion of the board to include the sheriff could be deemed unconstitutional in court because county officials could be seen as having too much control of the new agency.

Met With Brown

Along with telephone calls to Gates, Carpenter reportedly met with Brown and assured the Speaker that the decision to keep a new jail out of Santa Ana would not be changed.

A short time later, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee convened a hasty meeting in a room next to the lower chamber, and Roos changed his mind once again. He abandoned his nine-member board proposal and asked that Bergeson’s five-member board--without the sheriff--be put back into the bill.

By 4:04 p.m., 12 committee members had voted for the Bergeson measure, officially reviving it and sending it to the full Assembly.

The Assembly’s revival of Bergeson’s bill comes one day after the Republican senator convinced her colleagues in the upper house to amend the sales tax proposal to a bill up for consideration in the Senate. Now, she has two so-called legislative vehicles carrying the measure.

She said late Tuesday that she probably will drop her Senate amendments and stay with her original proposal, which now goes before the full Assembly.