Sheriff Says Cuts Could Mean 95 Layoffs : Law enforcement: The department has devised two plans. One assumes a 5% budget reduction, the other 10%. A work camp and booking station could close.

Ventura County Sheriff John V. Gillespie says he will have to lay off 59 deputies and 36 other personnel if county officials impose the 10% budget cut they say may be necessary.

“This time, we don’t believe they are just yelling, ‘wolf, wolf,’ ” Gillespie said in a newsletter to employees.

The sheriff’s announcement follows disclosure by Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury that his office--the county’s other major law-enforcement agency--will have to lay off nearly 30 attorneys and close its entire misdemeanor unit if the full 10% cut is required.

Like all county departments, the law-enforcement agencies have been asked to come up with two plans, one assuming a 5% cut, the other based on a 10% reduction.

County Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg said last month that the county faces a $16-million deficit, partly because the recession has lowered revenues and raised demand for county services. Another factor is the $14-billion state budget deficit, which may reduce county revenues further and add to the burden of services that the county must provide.

The county won’t know how bad off it is until the Legislature approves a state budget in the coming weeks. The county supervisors will hold budget hearings in August to determine how much each county agency will get.

In the Sheriff’s Department, the 5% contingency plan calls for laying off 29 deputies and 20 other employees. A number of facilities would be closed, including the east county booking station in Simi Valley, the Rose Valley work camp and the two-person sheriff’s station in the remote Lockwood Valley.

Criminal proceedings could no longer be held at the newly opened east county courthouse because there would be no deputies to provide security. The 5% cut would result in a saving of $2.4 million, officials estimate.

“We chose the programs that had the least direct impact on public safety,” said Undersheriff Larry Carpenter. “The cars on the street are the last to go.”

But the closures will still hurt law enforcement, Carpenter said. “Rose Valley is a tremendous program,” he said, adding that the work camp has provided rehabilitation and job training for inmates while performing chores for the U.S. Forest Service.

Without the east county booking station, he said, police in Simi Valley, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks will have to drive suspects to the jail in Ventura or release them with a notice to appear in court.

The consequences of a 10% cut are more serious, Carpenter said. Even as gang shootings and other gang crimes are increasing in the county, the Sheriff’s Department would have to shut down its anti-gang intelligence unit.

Also targeted for closure is the sheriff’s east county dispatching facility. Its demise would require the already overburdened west county dispatching center to handle emergency calls from the east county, probably resulting in delays, Assistant Sheriff Richard S. Bryce said.

“It would undoubtedly reduce response times,” Bryce said. “It might mean that you’re put on hold when you dial 911. . . . It would be very detrimental to citizens at the east end of the county.”

The 10% cut would cost the jobs of another 30 deputies and 16 more civilian personnel under the sheriff’s plan. The plan also calls for closure of the women’s unit at the Ojai Honor Farm.

“We’re fairly restricted on what we could do on jail issues,” Carpenter said. “We can’t stop feeding, exercising, providing medical services. We can’t stop providing appropriate supervision.”

The specter of major new budget cuts follows a 3% reduction in spending that county officials ordered in January when the revenue shortfall became apparent.

“That took a substantial bite out of our budget,” Bryce said. “We did a lot of belt-tightening to meet that.”

Last year, he said, the supervisors gave the Sheriff’s Department half a dozen new positions, to be funded with a new jail booking fee charged to the cities. But collecting the fee has been difficult, he said, and the positions remain unfilled.

“We’ve cut back essentially every year since Prop. 13,” Bryce said, referring to the landmark 1978 tax-cutting measure. “Where we had increases, we had to cut back somewhere else.”

He recalled a time when the department could provide such things as school programs to promote law enforcement and a special unit that worked only on juvenile crime. “We don’t have any of that anymore,” Bryce said.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Department, like other county agencies, has assumed new burdens mandated but not financed by the Legislature. “It’s like trying to keep your head above water when they keep adding water,” Bryce said.