2 Supervisors Rethinking O.C. Jail Support

Two of the County Board of Supervisors’ most stalwart backers of the proposed Gypsum Canyon jail said Tuesday that they are reconsidering their support in light of a new study that indicates the facility would cost taxpayers more than $119 million a year.

“I was shocked by the numbers,” Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said. “I’m really beginning to have doubts that the canyon effort can ever be successful.”

His comments were echoed by Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, another longtime supporter of the canyon jail.

“The time has come to stop spinning our wheels,” Wieder said. “We’d better start looking at other options.”

Those comments, which came in separate interviews, represent a dramatic shift in the board’s lineup on the Gypsum Canyon jail, and appear to spell a startlingly abrupt end to a project that has deadlocked the supervisors for more than four years and cost them more than $7 million in planning.

Wieder said a vote reversing the board’s endorsement of Gypsum Canyon as a jail site could come as early as next week.

In addition, the abrupt change of course could also take the spotlight off Gov. Pete Wilson, who was scheduled to decide in the next several days whether to sign a bill by Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) that would have helped clear the way for the supervisors to acquire the 2,500 acres of Gypsum Canyon property for the jail. Both supporters and opponents of that bill have been waging a steady lobbying campaign, and Wilson’s decision was sure to anger one side or the other.

The Gypsum Canyon standoff has hamstrung the Board of Supervisors since 1987, when Riley, Wieder and Supervisor Roger R. Stanton voted to pick Gypsum Canyon as the county’s preferred jail site. But opposition from the two other board members--Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez and Supervisor Don R. Roth--and the enormous costs of the facility have kept them from moving ahead with the project.

Since 1987, the value of the land has increased, as have projections for building and operating the jail.

And although jail supporters had hoped that they could scale down the facility to make at least the first phase more affordable, the report completed Tuesday indicates that the costs would still be enormous and that the county lacks any way to pay for it.

“This caught up with us,” Riley said. “Conditions that existed then just don’t exist anymore.”

If either Riley or Wieder were to withdraw support for the Gypsum Canyon site, it would tip the majority in favor of Vasquez and Roth. Both supervisors, who represent the area around the proposed jail site, have long opposed the project.

That too would leave a host of unanswered questions: The only other widely discussed jail options--expansion of either Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange or Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, or construction of a new facility on the grounds of the James A. Musick Branch Jail near Irvine--also have significant opposition.

Several board members and other officials declined to respond to the comments by Wieder and Riley, saying they preferred to discuss the issue with the two supervisors first.

Opponents of the canyon jail did say, however, that they were heartened by the report, which cost $400,000 to prepare.

“Those of us who have opposed the Gypsum Canyon jail site have always argued that it was an extremely expensive option,” Vasquez said. “This report verifies what we have said throughout.”

Riley acknowledged that any change in his position could tip the outcome of the debate. He said he is only willing to consider other sites reluctantly. But he added that he sees little hope for the Gypsum Canyon site right now.

“I’m absolutely very discouraged,” he said. “The figures would have to change an awful lot for me to be able to say that we should go ahead with Gypsum Canyon. . . . We may have to look at double-decking Theo Lacy and some of the other things that we have out there.”

Wieder said the failure last May of Measure J, the half-cent sales tax initiative for jails, and the increasingly dire financial situation faced by the county government have helped made the canyon jail impossible to build.

The report, a final draft of which was delivered to supervisors Tuesday, reinforced those fears by making clear that even a scaled-down version of the project would place enormous strain on the county budget.

Analysts who prepared that report found ways to shave more than $200 million from the cost of building and operating the first phase of the jail, which would include 3,072 beds out of 6,720 ultimately planned for the canyon. Inmate dining areas could be eliminated, medical services reduced and the number of single-inmate cells cut in half, analysts found.

All told, those changes and others resulted in $175 million worth of construction savings, as well as an additional $59 million in reduced operational costs. An appraiser hired by the county estimated the value of the land in Gypsum Canyon at $54 million, far less than some jail opponents have warned that the property would cost.

But the bad news for jail supporters is that even with the savings, the county would probably have to pay more than $65 million a year to operate the jail and an additional $54 million every year to pay the debt service for the land and construction costs.

The entire Sheriff’s Department today receives about $145 million; thus, the cost of building and operating just the first phase of the Gypsum Canyon jail, even after scaling the project back, would roughly double the department’s size and budget.

“I was a little disappointed in those figures, too, because I thought we could eliminate more than that,” Supervisor Stanton said. “I wish they were a little bit better, but I’m not going to express that much discouragement yet.”

Most importantly, the report notes that the county still has not identified any way to pay for the building and operation of the proposed jail.

“The only revenue source capable of generating sufficient funds to acquire, build and operate a new jail in Gypsum Canyon, either as originally planned or rescoped, would be through voter approval of a half-cent sales tax,” the report says. County voters rejected that idea overwhelmingly in May.

“The whole issue is moot until somebody is brave enough to raise at least three-quarters of a (cent) in sales tax,” Roth said. “I’m not that person. The people I associate with are very, very strongly opposed to new taxes.”

County officials have also debated the idea of trying to use dump fees to help pay for a new landfill in Gypsum Canyon. Under that plan, a portion of the land condemned for a dump could be turned over to the county for a jail.

But that idea, which was widely discussed last year, cannot address the lion’s share of the jail problem: how to pay for construction and operations. Land acquisition represents less than 10% of the cost of building just the first phase of the jail.

Dump fees cannot by law be used to build or operate jails, and county officials say they have no intention of suggesting such an idea.

“I don’t think it’s legally permissible,” Vasquez said. “It’s wrong.”

Moreover, the landfill option is considered politically dead. The Irvine Co., which owns the Gypsum Canyon property, opposes both the jail and the landfill, so to get the land, the supervisors would have to take it by condemnation. That requires four votes, and both Roth and Vasquez have said they would oppose it.

Although the Umberg bill would allow three of the five supervisors to condemn land in Gypsum Canyon for a jail, it does not reduce the four-fifths majority needed to acquire the land for a landfill. Therefore, even if they are not joined by any other board member, Roth and Vasquez could still block the idea of joining the jail and landfill into a single project by voting against condemnation of the landfill.

The Gypsum Canyon jail report will be formally presented to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday. The supervisors could simply receive it without taking action, but Wieder suggested that the board members take the opportunity to reverse their endorsement of Gypsum Canyon, which they reiterated in a 3-2 vote just last December.

“It’ll be a turning point,” she said. “Do we want to keep treading water, which is what I think we’re doing, or do we want to move on?”

Next Step

If support for a jail in Gypsum Canyon collapses, it would leave few options open to the Board of Supervisors. They include:

* James A. Musick Branch Jail near Irvine: The 100-acre complex has open space for a new facility, but there would be strong community opposition. Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez and Supervisor Thomas F. Riley would probably oppose it.

* Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana: The county’s largest jail could be expanded, but it would be expensive and Santa Ana already contains three of the five county-run jails. Supervisor Roger R. Stanton would probably be opposed.

* Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange: Already undergoing an expansion, the jail is limited to medium- and minimum-security inmates. Sheriff Brad Gates says the new jail needs to be a maximum-security facility. Supervisor Don R. Roth would probably be opposed.