New Booking Law Taxes Cities’ Resources : Finances: The $154 charge by the county for each prisoner turned over to its custody went into effect July 1 and is being bitterly protested.

It was just nine minutes after midnight last Monday when Santa Ana police brought their first prisoner of the new fiscal year to Orange County Jail.

Jose R. Delgado was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. Nothing especially unusual about that, just one felony among hundreds that county sheriff’s deputies process every day.

But what made Delgado’s booking different from any one that had ever gone before it was that it cost the city of Santa Ana $154, the result of the newly imposed “jail-booking fee,” which took effect the moment the fiscal year began. The fee’s enactment came despite fierce opposition by local cities, which produced enough clamor to persuade the County Board of Supervisors to delay implementation from January to July.

Now, however, the fee is in effect, imposed by a county government desperate for funds at a time when recession and cutbacks in state support have left it in a precarious financial situation.

If the fee is allowed to stand--and cities are fighting hard to keep that from happening--county officials estimate that it will bring them $6.2 million this fiscal year. So for the county government, the fee that debuted last week is a godsend, reluctantly imposed but badly needed.

For cities, however, the stroke of midnight heralding July 1 meant that the long-dreaded meter now is running, and the potential costs are huge.

In the first 48 hours alone, Santa Ana police brought 45 prisoners to the county jail system, more than any other arresting agency. One person was released almost immediately, part of the county’s “cite and release” system that frees some prisoners in order to make room for more serious offenders in the jail. The city will pay $154 for that inmate, too, even though he probably was back on the street just a few hours after arriving at the jail.

Santa Ana’s total tab for the two days: $6,930.

That made Santa Ana the hardest-hit city but it was far from alone. Orange and Garden Grove each rang up 48-hour bills of $2,310 each, while Westminster and Huntington Beach brought in a dozen inmates apiece, costing each of them $1,848. Even Villa Park, Dana Point and UC Irvine tipped in with one inmate each, costing them $154 apiece.

For those and a few other cities and school districts, the fees may not amount to much. But city officials warn that their budgets already are hurting from the recession, and $154 per inmate can add up very fast.

Indeed, if the fiscal year’s first 48 hours prove typical of the rest of 1991-92--and, if anything, they’re likely to be conservative, since they did not include a busy Friday or Saturday night--some cities can expect to get whopping bills. Santa Ana would end up paying the Orange County government $1.26 million between now and next June 30; in fact, city officials expect the bill will be almost twice that.

“We’re expecting to pay about $250,000 for this fee this year,” said Irvine Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan. “That’s four police officers. I would prefer, and the residents of my city would prefer, to have those four officers than to have to pay this fee.”

In Garden Grove, the money that is expected to go for jail-booking fees would have been enough to pay for the city’s support of the local symphony and Shakespeare festival, which was withdrawn for the first time this year; in Santa Ana, it would have paid for 10 new police officers.

Even Fullerton, which has its own holding facility, occasionally needs to book suspects into County Jail, and every time that happens, it will cost the city money. (Cities with their own jails use them to hold suspects until the arrestees’ first court appearance. If the court orders them to stay in jail, they are booked into the county facility at no cost to the cities.)

“The fee is here now, and we don’t like having to pay it,” said Fullerton Mayor Chris Norby. “It’s in our budget, and we’re just having to cut services somewhere else to pay for it.”

Nowhere is that truer than in Santa Ana, and nowhere is anger over the fee more intense.

“It just makes me madder than hell that this perverse tax has been put on the cities,” Santa Ana Mayor Daniel A. Young said. “It says that the better the job the Police Department does, the more it will hurt the city. That’s asinine.”

What’s equally clear, however, is that the county shows no sign of relenting. To do so would make Orange County unique among the state’s large counties, every one of which has enacted the fee. And Orange County officials note that it would simply shift the cities’ problem back to the under-funded county government.

Going it alone and forgoing the jail-booking fee would force the county to cut elsewhere. Law enforcement might suffer. Environmental management, health care or welfare administration could be subject to cuts. And jail expansion might have to be put off, deepening the county’s jail-overcrowding crisis.

“We don’t like doing this,” Supervisor Don R. Roth said in a recent interview. “But the state didn’t leave us any choice.”

Roth and other county officials hope the jail-booking fees encourage cities to rethink the way they handle arrests or the facilities they build to deal with them. Anaheim, for instance, has its own City Jail, and the benefits of those beds already are being felt.

In the fiscal year’s first 48 hours, Anaheim, the county’s second-largest city, brought only one prisoner to the jail. Over the course of the coming year, that city’s jail could end up saving the municipality millions of dollars.

“And that will do something about our jail overcrowding problem too,” said Roth, a former Anaheim mayor, who also had praise for city of Orange efforts to address the issue. “I hope that other cities will follow their lead.”

Forced by economic necessity, many cities show signs of doing just that. Several cities are reviewing their policies for arresting and booking suspects; some are expected to begin releasing less serious suspects, rather than bringing them to County Jail and having them released from there. Some cities are considering building new jail cells, and others are considering plans to work together.

In Irvine, for instance, Sheridan said officials are trying to join with neighboring municipalities to share jail space. Eventually, cities might join in groups to rent jail beds at prices cheaper than the county rate, Sheridan said.

“You can bet that we’re going to explore every option, every avenue,” she added. “The county and the state haven’t left us any choice.”

Jail Booking Fees: The First Two Days

A new County Jail booking fee hit cities on July 1 just as they are struggling to cope with budget crunches. Here is the impact over the first two days the fee was in force:

City or Agency Number of Bookings Cost Santa Ana 45 $6,930 Orange County Sheriff’s Department 35 $0 Marshal’s office 17 $0 California Highway Patrol 15 $0 Orange 15 $2,310 Garden Grove 15 $2,310 Westminster 12 $1,848 Huntington Beach 12 $1,848 Cypress 11 $1,694 Newport Beach 11 $1,694 Tustin 9 $1,386 Irvine 7 $1,078 District attorney’s office 4 $0 Buena Park 3 $462 Fullerton 3 $462 Brea 3 $462 Seal Beach 2 $308 Villa Park 1 $154 Anaheim 1 $154 Costa Mesa 1 $154 Fountain Valley 1 $154 Dana Point 1 $154 San Juan Capistrano 1 $154 UC Irvine 1 $154 La Habra 1 $154 Placentia 1 $154 La Palma 1 $154 Mission Viejo 1 $154

Note: State and county agencies do not pay for the inmates they book into the county system. The fee is levied only on cities and school districts.

Source: Orange County Sheriff’s Department