REGIONAL REPORT : County Fees for Inmate Bookings Create Uproar : Budgets: A new state law allows those charges and one for collecting property taxes. The bills are now coming due.

The high-desert town of Adelanto in San Bernardino County is a small and gritty place with 13 police officers, a one-cell jail and more tumbleweeds than people. Yet each year, more than 1,500 arrests occur there--one for every 10 residents.

So when Police Chief Philip Genaway heard about a new state law allowing the county to bill him $122.90 for every person his officers booked into the county jail, his reaction was sharp. One crisp November day, he announced he was letting four suspected burglars “go free” because he couldn’t fit them into his jail and couldn’t afford the county’s booking fees.

In truth, the police chief didn’t really let the four go. He just freed them “pending further investigation” and rearrested them after he had made his point and made room in the city jail.

But the protest foreshadowed what has become a roiling political battle over the latest byproduct of California’s budget crunch--a new set of fees that has pitted counties against cities (particularly their police departments and schools) over who will shoulder the burden of the state’s fiscal woes.

Last July, in the wee hours of a heated budget debate, the Legislature stripped the counties of more than $700 million in state funding to help make up for a $3.6-billion state deficit. To help the counties recoup the loss, state lawmakers gave them the authority to begin charging local governments for two services: property tax collection and the jailing of criminal suspects for the day or two before they make their initial court appearance.

The law went into effect Jan. 1, but counties were allowed to charge the fees retroactive to last July.

Mired in red ink and fearful of an impending recession, all but three of the state’s 58 counties adopted one or both of the fees in some form.

The booking fees, which range from $36.03 per prisoner in rural Nevada County to $154 a head in San Diego and Orange counties, are expected to raise $40 million statewide for cash-strapped counties.

With the bills now coming due, communities throughout California are in an uproar. Last month, 200 city and police officials turned out in Sacramento to give a legislative committee an earful at a hearing on proposed revisions to the fees.

And last October, 3,000 municipal officials demonstrated against the assessments in Anaheim, waving protest signs and demanding that the fees be repealed.

While continuing to protest the fees, cities have begun to brace for their anticipated effect. School districts are planning deeper-than-ever budget cuts and police officials say they are scaling back drastically on the number of people--from shoplifters to drunk drivers, check forgers and prostitutes--they book into county jail.

“Crime almost pays,” a disgusted Chief Genaway said recently. “It’s gotten so you almost have to have a financial officer standing by for every arrest.”

Some county officials say the police are overstating the problem and the lengths to which they will go to avoid the fees. Police concede that some of the suspects who are ticketed and released--after promising to return for the court appearance--would no doubt bail out of jail shortly after their arrests anyway.

And both sides agree that most of those who are released are not accused of violent crimes.

So beyond the issue of safety, both sides said, is the question of fairness.

“We all have to share in this deficit,” said David Oppenheim of the County Supervisors Assn. of California. “It’s not fair for one level of government to absorb all the pain, and the counties have been the whipping boys for a long time.”

Countered Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young: “The counties are just doing what the state has already done--they’re passing the buck.”

The furor over the two new fees has spawned at least nine legislative bills seeking to repeal one or both of them and a 10th measure seeking to toughen them.

Several lawsuits involving booking fees are also in the works, and a suit challenging the property tax fee was filed in January on behalf of the school districts, who say the levies could cost them up to $150 million this year.

Though concern has been expressed about the impact of both fees, by far the biggest political outcry has been over the booking fees.

Cities say that they are cutting back by the hundreds on the number of defendants they book into county jail, preferring instead to issue tickets and trust the accused to show up later in court. (Until their first court appearance, arrestees are the responsibility of the city.)

Oppenheim, of the county supervisors’ group, said jail bookings are down by as much as 40% from last year in some parts of the state. It is unclear how much of that is due to the booking fees.

Even with the decreased bookings, city officials say the fees will mean millions of dollars in unexpected costs this year, most of which will come out of police budgets.

At the Los Angeles Police Department, for example, the bill from the county is expected to arrive this month to the tune of an estimated $800,000, none of it budgeted for, said Cmdr. Matthew V. Hunt, who manages the LAPD’s jail system.

The LAPD’s facilities for women inmates are limited, Hunt said. So the department books about 1,700 suspects a month into the county jails, 95% of them female and each of them now worth $108.71 to the county in booking fees.

For the last three months, the LAPD has sought to save money by detaining women defendants in a converted holding tank in the Rampart station near downtown. But the tank fills up fast, particularly on weekends when the vice squads conduct prostitution sweeps, LAPD officials said. Despite its best efforts, LAPD often ends up having to send women to county jail after all.

“Frankly, I don’t know where the money’s going to come from,” said Hunt. “Maybe we’ll give the county an IOU.”

Like Los Angeles, most cities operate their own jails, but those facilities are far too small to handle the overflow crowds that would be booked there. For years, they have relied on the county jails to handle the spillover. But in urban areas, such as Los Angeles and Orange counties, the county jail system is overcrowded as well.

Consequently, county jail officials welcome the booking fees, saying it not only helps replenish county coffers, but makes cities think twice about using valuable jail space.

City police complain, however, that booking fees only make it that much more difficult to keep criminals off the street.

For example, Sgt. Ernest Tull of the San Bernardino vice squad says he now routinely arrests women for prostitution only to ticket them, release them and catch them soliciting on his way home. Police officials in other communities say they too have had such repeat business.

Compton Police Chief Terry Ebert, whose city has one of the highest crime rates in the state, says his officers are now booking only about 20 people per month into the county jail, compared to more than 50 per month before the fees. But he suspects--although it is too soon to tell--that a sizable number of the people his officers ticket and release will break their promises to show up in court.

Unlike the suspects who are released after being cited, police believe those who must bail themselves out have a stronger incentive to return to court--money.

“It’s a lousy way to run a railroad,” said Oxnard Police Chief Robert Owens. “And it’s a terrible way for the state to balance its budget.”

In response to concerns expressed by the cities, several counties--including Orange--have sought to soften the blow by postponing imposition of the fees until next fiscal year.

Others have forgone their option to make the fees retroactive. Los Angeles County has exempted smaller cities, such as Bellflower and Hawaiian Gardens, that contract with the Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement.

These and other factors contribute to the feeling by some county officials that the problem has been overblown.

“The overwhelming majority (of the arrestees cited and released) are misdemeanants,” said Michael Corbett, a legislative representative for the county supervisors’ group.

“They are check writers, forgers, simple assaults, not robbers or felons. And in many instances what’s being done (the cite and release) is not much more than has already been done in other counties because of (jail) overcrowding.”

Oppenheim said that, from the county standpoint, the new fees are overdue. When Proposition 13 was passed in 1978, freezing property tax assessments, the counties lost most of their ability to raise revenue. As the costs of collecting property taxes, administering jail bookings and other services continued to rise, he said, counties were forced to cut other services to cover the loss.

Cities, meanwhile, had more independence and were able to raise taxes and fees to cover their costs.

But cities say their situation is far more bleak than Oppenheim acknowledges.

They, too, have been brought up short by the recession, and are scrambling to stay out of the red. A recent survey of 200 communities by the League of California Cities, for example, found that 31% already had cut staff or services to balance their budgets even before the new fees hit.

While the city vs. county funding debate continues, school districts and police are warning local taxpayers about the drawbacks of the current solution--warning that the new fees will translate into less adequate classrooms and less rigorous law enforcement.

“This,” said San Bernardino Mayor Bob Holcomb, “is government at its worst.”

COUNTY FEES

Last July, the Legislature passed a law allowing counties to assess county jail booking fees and to charge school districts and local governments for property tax collection. All counties in the Southland have imposed the controversial new fees or announced their intention to do so.

1 SANTA BARBARA COUNTY

Has implemented both fees with some exemptions. Booking fee: Currently $100, but county is negotiating with cities over a proposed $146.85 fee.

2 VENTURA COUNTY

Has implemented both fees. Booking fee: $120

3 LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Has implemented both fees. Booking fee per prisoner: $108.71 for most cities; $114.66 for those not on the county’s computerized booking network.

4 ORANGE COUNTY

Has implemented property tax fee, but postponed booking fees until next year. Booking fee will be: $154.

5 SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY

Has implemented both fees. Booking fee: $122.90

6 RIVERSIDE COUNTY

Has approved both property tax fee and booking fee of $110.40.

7 SAN DIEGO COUNTY

Has implemented both fees. Booking fee: $154. City of San Diego would be exempt because it is builiding a 200-bed jail.

8 IMPERIAL COUNTY

Has approved the tax collection fee. Booking fees of $80 to $110 are under consideration. However no date has been set for a vote by the Board of Supervisors.

Source: County Supervisors’ Assn. of California.