Supervisor Proposes Summit on Jail Fees : Finances: Maggie Erickson Kildee wants to change a booking charge that 10 cities are suing over. A spokesman for the mayors isn’t optimistic about settling.

Hoping to resolve a lawsuit between Ventura County and its 10 cities, Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee is proposing a summit meeting with the cities’ mayors to discuss changing a prisoner booking fee that the cities have refused to pay.

The county and the cities are engaged in a legal battle over the $120-per-prisoner booking fee and over a separate fee that the county charges cities, schools and other special districts for the cost of collecting property taxes.

The Board of Supervisors adopted both fees in September to make up for millions of dollars lost to cuts in state funding.

In a report to be discussed at today’s supervisors’ meeting, Erickson Kildee suggests that the board consider charging cities only for bookings that exceed an average number set for each city based on population and other factors.

She also suggests that the supervisors consider charging the cities only for suspects who are booked for certain minor crimes.

Last month, the 10 cities filed a joint lawsuit against the county for withholding more than $1.3 million in property taxes to cover the unpaid booking and tax collection fees.

In the suit, city officials assert that the fees are unconstitutional because they represent, in essence, special taxes that have not been approved by voters.

But city officials say they hold out little hope that Erickson Kildee’s proposal will persuade them to drop the lawsuit.

“I don’t know that what she is proposing has any basis for settlement,” said Camarillo City Manager Bill Little, a spokesman for the 10 cities in the lawsuit.

What the cities want most, Little said, is for the county to turn over to them the property taxes that were withheld in May by county Auditor Norman R. Hawkes.

Although Little said city officials are willing to meet with Erickson Kildee, he said her proposal may soon be academic because state legislators are considering repealing the laws that allow counties to charge the booking and tax collection fees.

Even if the Legislature changes the law, the cities plan to press forward with their lawsuit in an attempt to force the county to give up the property taxes that have been withheld.

If the Legislature does not repeal the fees, Little said, Erickson Kildee’s proposal would leave unresolved the dispute over the property tax collection fees, because it addresses only the booking fees.

“As long as they want to impose the fees, I don’t know any way to resolve the suit,” he said.

In an interview Monday, Erickson Kildee said it is not certain that the Legislature will repeal the booking fee in the near future.

If the Legislature allows the counties to continue to levy the booking fees, she said, the amount of the fee should be lowered so that it does not place too much of a strain on the cities’ budgets.

But Erickson Kildee said she wants to keep the fee in some form because it has forced the cities’ law enforcement agencies to rethink their policies about booking prisoners.

Since the fee took effect in July, 1990, the number of prisoners booked by the 10 cities has dropped by 45%, from 979 in July, 1990, to 538 in May, she said.

“We believe the booking fee has provided an incentive to law enforcement in some of the cities to book only those individuals who truly require incarceration,” Erickson Kildee said in her report. “The result has been a significant reduction in jail bookings, which has helped to relieve some of the stress on our overcrowded jail system.”

The largest drop in bookings came from the cities of Ventura and Oxnard, according to sheriff’s officials.

In July of last year, Oxnard booked 355 prisoners into County Jail, compared to 99 in May of this year. Meanwhile, the city of Ventura booked 227 prisoners in July, 1990, compared to 89 in May of this year.

Little said he believes that most cities have always been careful about which prisoners should be booked.

But because the cities of Ventura and Oxnard are near the County Jail in Ventura, he said, the police departments in those cities were less selective in booking prisoners until the county began to impose the $120-per-prisoner fee.

Oxnard Assistant Police Chief Bill Kady disagreed, saying that his force has never incarcerated people without cause. He said the number of bookings from his city has dropped because his officers have been forced to release suspects with a citation who would normally be sent to jail.

“It was out of necessity that we became more selective,” he said.

Even before the fee was imposed, Kady said, Oxnard police cited and released about 60% of the people who were arrested.

Robert L. Briggs, business manager for the Sheriff’s Department, dismissed Little’s theory, saying the County Jail is located near most west county cities. He said cities in the east county can book prisoners through the East Valley Booking Facility in Thousand Oaks.