Wilson Vetoes Bill, Probably Scuttling O.C. Canyon Jail

Gov. Pete Wilson on Friday vetoed a measure aimed at making it easier for the Orange County Board of Supervisors to put a massive new jail on private property near Anaheim Hills, and even supporters of the project agreed that his action sounded its death knell.

“Now this issue has been forced for us,” said Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, a longtime supporter of the Gypsum Canyon jail proposal who has expressed doubts about it in recent weeks. “The decision’s been made. You can’t cry over spilled milk.”

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who also has backed the Gypsum Canyon jail for years, said he, too, has reached the end of the line. “We go back to the drawing board,” he said. “We’re going to have to go to the land that’s owned by the county.”

In his veto message, Wilson agreed that there was a “compelling” case to build a new county jail; the existing five facilities typically hold more than 4,400 prisoners in cells designed for 3,203. Overcrowding is forcing authorities to release about 850 prisoners prematurely every week.

But the governor said those public safety concerns were not enough to warrant “state interference” in breaking a political deadlock on the Board of Supervisors over where to build the new jail.

“If the board cannot agree, I respectfully suggest that to resolve the impasse, they submit the question of the site to the ballot, allow the voters to select the site and agree to abide by their decision,” Wilson wrote. “Then the new jail can be begun on a site properly chosen by the people of Orange County and not the state Legislature.”

Sheriff Brad Gates, one of the leading supporters of the Gypsum Canyon jail, furiously attacked the decision and said it undercut Wilson’s image as a supporter of strong law enforcement.

“I’m extremely disappointed in the governor,” Gates said. “I thought he was a law-and-order governor who cared about the citizens of this county. I really now have to doubt the seriousness of that position.”

Gates, who has championed Gypsum Canyon for more than four years, said he was now ready to turn the leadership of the issue over to others.

“I hope the public can see that I’ve done all that I can,” the sheriff said bitterly. “Now it’s time for someone else to step up and deal with this question.”

Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), who wrote the bill, said he also was unhappy with the governor’s decision.

“It’s good news for criminals in Orange County,” a dejected Umberg said. “It sets us back on building a much-needed jail facility. You can put me on record as saying I don’t think the governor understands the magnitude of the problem here in Orange County.”

While supporters of the jail lamented Wilson’s veto, opponents were just as quick to praise it.

Supervisor Don R. Roth, whose district includes the Gypsum Canyon area and who has lobbied hard to defeat the jail proposal, said he was pleased but not entirely surprised by the veto.

The bill, according to Roth, would have violated property rights, set a dangerous precedent and stripped local government of the right and responsibility to deal with the issue without interference from Sacramento. “This really is not an issue that should be decided by a state senator back in Eureka,” Roth said.

Anaheim City Councilman Irv Pickler agreed and said he believes the veto closes the books on the Gypsum Canyon proposal.

“I’m glad to see this put behind us,” he said. “The whole council has fought this. We felt this was not the spot for it.”

And even Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young, a strong supporter of the Gypsum Canyon project, said time has run out on the idea.

“We’re dead in the water,” he said. “Right now, we have political deadlock, and this bill was an attempt to break that deadlock. Now we’re back to square one.”

Although Wilson’s veto appeared to represent the final blow to the proposal, support for it already had been wavering.

Supervisors Riley and Wieder, who voted with Supervisor Roger R. Stanton to pick Gypsum Canyon as the board’s preferred site in 1987, have expressed doubts about the project in recent weeks in light of a new financial analysis.

That report found that it would cost county taxpayers $119 million a year to buy the land and build and operate just the first phase of the canyon jail. The county does not have that money, and only a additional half-cent sales tax could raise it, the report concluded.

The supervisors received that report two weeks ago, and voted to begin studying alternatives to the canyon jail.

Stanton, however, argued that the report did not address important cost savings associated with the canyon jail. The county, for instance, could close the James A. Musick Branch Jail near Irvine and sell that land if it built the new jail in Gypsum Canyon.

On Friday, Stanton continued to argue for moving ahead with the Gypsum Canyon jail, but he appeared increasingly isolated, and he accused the project’s opponents of failing to come up with a viable counterproposal.

“Anyone who continues to oppose this, I’d like to see an alternative,” he said. “One thing that I will personally not tolerate is people saying: ‘We’re going to jump ship on Gypsum Canyon, but we’re not going to offer anything else.’ ”

Riley suggested one course of action: that the supervisors convene a committee of their top aides and direct them to study new jail options on land the county already owns.

“We’re going to have to go to the land that’s owned by the county,” he said. In addition, the county administrative office is preparing a report of its own, analyzing the options that the board might consider.

The Gypsum Canyon issue has hamstrung the Board of Supervisors since 1987, when it chose the site as its preferred location for a new jail. Since then, the supervisors have spent $7.3 million studying the proposal and producing plans for it, but they have been stymied by a lack of funds to complete the project and a political standoff that has kept it bottled up.

Although three of the five members have consistently voted in favor of the site and two opposed it, state law requires that four of the five supervisors agree in order to acquire property through condemnation.

Hoping to break that deadlock, Umberg won passage of a bill that would have lowered the majority vote needed for condemnation on a new jail, allowing the three supervisors to prevail.

Umberg was fought at every turn by conservatives, including Orange County Republican lawmakers, who claimed that the bill was a bad precedent because it eroded private property rights. They said the current two-thirds “super-majority” vote requirement for local governments to condemn land was a necessary and vital safeguard for landowners.

Wilson, however, said that was less the question in the Umberg bill than “what is the proper site for the new jail. The decision as to its proper location is, of course, one to be made by local government without state interference.”

“The reported inability of the board to agree on this local responsibility of siting the jail is not sufficient argument to depart from the established standards of the extraordinary vote required for exercise of eminent domain,” the governor’s veto message said.

Despite the setback, Umberg said Friday that he will continue to work on a solution for the jail problem.

“We’ve got to move forward on this thing,” he said. “We have a horrendous problem. We seem to be taking sites off the table (for discussion), instead of putting them back on.”

FOR THE CHILDREN: Gov. Wilson signed a three-bill package creating a landmark program to detect and treat lead poisoning in children. A35