COUNTYWIDE : Measure J Panel Not Yet Ready to Disband

Despite the defeat of Measure J at the polls last week, members of the commission created to determine how to spend the revenues from the half-cent sales tax initiative decided Wednesday not to disband just yet.

Instead, the five-member Regional Justice Facilities Commission will go on hiatus and not meet again until Aug. 28.

In the meantime, commissioners said, they want to encourage discussions among city and county officials about how to ease the county’s problem of jail overcrowding.

Measure J, which would have increased the county’s sales tax to 7% to raise revenues for criminal justice facilities, was defeated by a 3-1 margin. Sheriff Brad Gates, the driving force behind the measure, wanted the sales tax revenues for a 6,720-bed jail in Gypsum Canyon. He has said he wants to put a similar measure before voters again.

But at the commission’s meeting Wednesday, County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, one of the commission members, said that even a June, 1992, ballot measure would be too soon for him.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who chairs the commission, agreed.

“I think that going back to the voters now would be a slap in the face to the voters,” she said following the meeting. “I don’t think it would be right. I think we need to get our ducks in a row, and I think studying the alternatives (in the meantime) is a service the commission can provide.”

The commission had received a number of proposals from cities and the county for Measure J projects. Had the sales tax been approved, the commission’s task was to come up with a master plan showing how the revenues would be used.

Because the problem of jail overcrowding continues, Wieder said, commission members want to encourage cities and others to continue refining their ideas for solutions.

The commission’s attorney, Paul A. Webber, said he was monitoring the outcome of two pending lawsuits challenging legislation that allows creation of such independent commissions for taxing purposes.

“I know that we are all disappointed about the outcome of the vote last Tuesday,” Webber told them in a letter. But just as with Measure M, the half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements approved by voters last November, “perhaps the second or third time will be a charm,” he said.

Pending the outcome of the lawsuits, Webber told the commissioners, they might be able to “adopt a master plan so that if you did choose to put the measure on the ballot again, there would be a clearer understanding by the voters of where the money is going.”

Throughout the campaign, Measure J opponents criticized the referendum because it never specifically said what projects would be funded.

Wieder said the issue of funding for the commission’s operating expenses is another that needs more time to solve. Because the ballot measure failed, county supervisors will have to pick up the expenses for the commission, which was created in February. If commissioners don’t meet again until August, the county staff will have time to research the issue, Wieder said.

The commission’s budget had been estimated at $50,000 through Oct. 31.

“Speaking now as a supervisor, before I would vote on any more funding, I would have to have justification for spending the money,” she said. “We would need more data.”