Canyon Jail Alternative to Be Sought : Crisis: Supervisors stop short of abandoning project but tell staff to work up new plans, including financing.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors stopped short of abandoning the Gypsum Canyon jail proposal Tuesday, but told its staff to scour the county and come up with other proposals for relieving the jail overcrowding crisis.

“We’re now headed in the direction that we should have been for a long time,” said Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, whose longtime support for the Gypsum Canyon proposal has been tempered in recent weeks by doubts about the project’s cost. “We can’t put all our eggs in one basket.”

Despite the objections of Gypsum Canyon’s most fervent board supporter, Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, the board cast an unusual 4-1 vote, directing its staff to develop a list of short-term options by Dec. 10.

The staff was also ordered to prepare a financial plan for any jail proposal that it suggests, and the supervisors agreed that they would not move forward on any long-term project until a complete financing package was in place.

In addition, the supervisors ordered a review of an inmate population study that years ago warned of the expanding need for new jails in Orange County. If inmate estimates are revised downward--and particularly if the need for more maximum-security cells is reduced--that would knock out one of the main pillars underlying the Gypsum Canyon proposal.

Together, the board’s actions appear to set in motion the demise of the Gypsum Canyon jail, a 6,720-bed, maximum-security facility that backers want to construct on the outskirts of Anaheim. That site was chosen by a three-member board majority in 1987, but four years of work and $7.3 million spent on designing the project still have not cleared the way for construction to begin.

In a report presented to the board Tuesday, county analysts acknowledged that the government cannot afford to build and operate the canyon jail without a half-cent sales tax. Voters resoundingly defeated that idea in May, and no board member has indicated a willingness to revive the measure.

“The whole thing has shifted from site to the financial situation,” Supervisor Don R. Roth said after the vote. “We don’t have a revenue stream. I think the board is realizing that.”

Tuesday’s vote reflected the new political alignment that has gathered around the jail issue during the past 10 days, with Supervisors Wieder and Thomas F. Riley for the first time joining Roth and Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez in a vote that could ease the county away from Gypsum Canyon and toward other alternatives.

They did not use Tuesday’s session to drop the canyon jail idea outright, however. Vasquez, who had urged his colleagues to consider that course, withdrew his proposal early Tuesday after discovering that a majority of the board was not ready for such an abrupt move.

“There was a reluctance on their part to go to that extent,” Vasquez said. “What was approved, however, was a clear recommendation that financing is going to propel this issue from now on. That’s a major milestone because my colleagues--three of them--are for the first time saying that financing has to come first.”

Moreover, Wieder suggested in her remarks that she could be ready to dump the project in the future.

“At this time, I am not ready to abandon Gypsum Canyon as the site for a jail,” she said. “However, we need to explore some alternatives, primarily county-owned land.”

Of the jail expansion ideas that have been widely discussed in recent years, only Gypsum Canyon is on land that the county does not own.

Uncertainty about the Gypsum Canyon project has bubbled over during the past two weeks, largely in response to a new financial report concluding that the jail would cost taxpayers $119 million a year. Wieder and Riley both expressed shock at that amount and said in interviews that they had grave doubts about the feasibility of the jail project in light of the report and the county’s deepening budget woes.

Despite their concerns, however, both had agreed before Tuesday’s meeting that they would not vote to drop the site as long as Gov. Pete Wilson is weighing a bill by Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) that would make it easier for the supervisors to condemn land for a jail.

Stanton, who fought hard to keep his colleagues from taking any action that would jeopardize the Umberg bill, used Tuesday’s session to offer a wide-ranging defense of Gypsum Canyon and detailed criticism of the new cost estimates.

For instance, Stanton said, the figures in the report do not reflect the savings that the county would get by closing the James A. Musick Branch Jail and selling that land as part of the Gypsum Canyon project. He also warned that further delays will not make the problem any easier to solve.

“Those construction costs and acquisition costs are going to continue to escalate,” Stanton said. “We’re sitting here saying: ‘My goodness, the costs went up over the last four years because we did nothing. Let’s do nothing again.’ ”

For supporters of the Gypsum Canyon jail, the last hope rests with Wilson, who must decide within the coming two weeks whether to sign the Umberg legislation.

If Wilson vetoes the bill, his action would almost certainly be followed by a quick and final Board of Supervisors rejection of further work on Gypsum Canyon, officials on both sides of the issue agree. If he allows the bill to become law, it might give new hope to the supporters of the Gypsum Canyon jail, but even that action would still leave the county with the question of how to pay for the facility.

Stanton and others have suggested that the county sell the Musick jail and another, seven-acre site in Anaheim, and that new construction estimates be prepared for a much smaller, “starter” jail in Gypsum Canyon. If analysts could come up with a way to pay for that suggestion, the canyon proposal could have an outside chance, officials said.

Still, opponents are confident that the county’s budget will not allow the project to go ahead, and they predicted Tuesday that it is only a matter of time before the board casts a vote ending the Gypsum Canyon project once and for all.

“I believe the continued expenditure of funds on architects, engineers, planners, planning, county staff time for litigation on jail sites not owned by the county should be halted,” Roth said. “This type of activity is not only ludicrous but a waste of money.”