L.A. Prison Foes Vow to Fight On in Court : Budget: Funding for the controversial facility was reauthorized by the Legislature. Governor demanded it.

Opponents of a controversial prison planned for downtown Los Angeles vowed Sunday to continue their fight in the courts and at the ballot box against the $121-million facility.

City and community leaders including City Councilwoman Gloria Molina and Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) hoped the plan would have been knocked out of a $55-billion state budget passed by the Legislature on Saturday and sent to Gov. George Deukmejian.

But Deukmejian had said he would not sign the main budget bill unless the Legislature reauthorized funding for the 1,450-bed Los Angeles facility and an additional prison in Lancaster.

The spending bill won final approval late Saturday night by a Senate vote of 29 to 8. The Assembly had approved the budget bill just after midnight Friday, by a vote of 55 to 14.

Now, “we have every intention of continuing to battle the prison in the courts,” Molina said, referring to a lawsuit filed by the city of Los Angeles to block the prison.

In a victory for those who have fought the prison for years, Superior Court Judge John Zebrowski last week declared that an environmental study certified last December was “inadequate” because it did not consider the impact if the maximum-security prison became severely overcrowded.

The decision, which state officials sought to have Zebrowski overturn, means the state Department of Corrections must submit a supplemental report that considers the impact of potentially severe overcrowding. Opponents expect the judge’s decision to delay construction beyond upcoming state elections in November.

“Within a year, Gov. Deukmejian will be out of there,” said Lucy Ramos, a spokeswomanfor the Mothers of East Los Angeles, a group of 100 women organized in 1986 to fightthe prison and other perceived threats to the communities east of downtown. “Then (U.S. Republican Sen. Pete) Wilson or (former San Francisco Mayor Dianne) Feinstein will be our new governor, and we know both of them oppose the prison.”

Molina agreed, saying, “The hope is that we will have a reasonable governor who will listen to us.”

The proposed prison site is near the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Santa Fe Avenue, just west of the Los Angeles River.

Department of Corrections officials have said the new prison would bring hundreds of jobs and a multimillion-dollar payroll to the low-income area.

Local residents, however, fear the potentially adverse effects it would have on traffic, property values and the character of the neighborhoods in an area where 49% of the heavily Latino population of more than 100,000 is below age 25.

“This community is not giving up,” said Father John Moretta of Resurrection Church in Boyle Heights, who was in Sacramento on Friday along with other community leaders lobbying against reauthorization of funding for the prison.

“This issue just shows the small-mindedness of a governor who has never dialogued with the Hispanic community on the Eastside about this,” Moretta said. “We will win, there is no question.”

In Lancaster, prison foes also vowed to press a lawsuit filed in January aimed at blocking prison construction in that city’s residential corridor on grounds that the state did not conduct an adequate environmental review.