Suit Filed, Another Planned to Block Dual Prisons

Although Los Angeles County contributes about 40% of the state’s prison population, local officials in separate actions Thursday moved to block proposed state prisons near the Civic Center and in the Antelope Valley.

Los Angeles city officials and Eastside activists filed a lawsuit in the morning to block construction of a 1,450-bed facility next to the Los Angeles River. Later in the day, the county Board of Supervisors voted to sue to block a similar facility on county-owned land in Lancaster.

“Nobody wants these prisons,” said urban planner Frank Villalobos, head of a Latino coalition that opposes the downtown prison on a 20-acre industrial site at Santa Fe Avenue and Olympic Boulevard.

At present, there are no state prisons in the county. The two proposed sites were part of a delicate compromise worked out in the Legislature several years ago. They were linked after Democratic lawmakers from urban Los Angeles complained that the heavily Republican Antelope Valley ought to accept an equal share of the prison burden.

Under a legislative compromise, neither prison could be occupied until construction is begun on the other.

But that did little to quell opposition to either proposal.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, for example, is but the latest move in the five-year fight against the prison by Latino activists and others who contend that Eastside neighborhoods have more than their share of jails.

The suit said the state Department of Corrections violated state guidelines by ignoring environmental considerations concerning the proposed prison. Although an environmental impact report was approved for the site, the suit argued that the EIR was inadequate because it ignored the impact on the character and social fabric of the surrounding neighborhoods.

The suit said state planners also failed to study possible soil contamination from toxics in the area.

The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the compromise bill that authorized the two prison sites in the county.

“By authorizing two different prisons, neither one of which could be passed without the other in the same legislation, passage of this bill . . . constituted classic ‘logrolling,’ in violation of the California Constitution,’ ” the suit said.

Later Thursday, at the urging of Supervisor Mike Antonovich, county supervisors voted 3 to 0 to sue the state to block construction of a 2,200-prisoner facility at Avenue J and 60th Street West in the Mira Loma district of Lancaster.

Antonovich said he opposes the Lancaster site because the county has owned the 232-acre parcel for 42 years. The county needs it to provide the fast-growing Antelope Valley with expanded hospital, police protection, probation, animal care and other services, he said.

“Of all the places, they picked the one owned by the county for 42 years,” Antonovich said. He said the state’s acquisition of that site for a prison would amount to “double taxation,” because county taxpayers, who have already paid for the site, would have to pay again to replace it.

Antonovich would not say when a suit would be filed by the county, which can legally challenge the prison environmental impact report until Jan. 29.

Antonovich did not, however, voice support for the city’s attempt to block the urban prison. “That downtown industrial area is appropriate for a state prison,” he said, calling the city’s suit “frivolous.”

The Lancaster City Council last week also voted to authorize a lawsuit to block the Mira Loma prison but has not yet filed it.

Supervisor Edmund D. Edelman--who participated in board discussion of the matter on Tuesday but was not present for Thursday’s vote--expressed concern that if the county sued, the delicate compromise worked out in 1987 “could easily come unglued.”

Antonovich, however, maintained that the spirit of the compromise would remain intact if the Lancaster prison were moved to another site in the county.

He and fellow Supervisor Deane Dana suggested state-owned property in Hungry Valley, a remote area west of Interstate 5 and south of Gorman.

But Mike Van Winkle, a spokesman for state Department of Corrections chief James Rowland, said the agency is unlikely to change its mind about either site, despite the lawsuits and threats of lawsuits.

The locations are “good sites,” Van Winkle said, and in order to change them “corrections would have to put together a package and go back to the Legislature and explain why.”