ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Unfortunately, Everyone Has to Pay

Government has fallen into carnivorous times. Everyone is trying to survive by taking chunks out of everybody else. One of the prime examples is jail booking fees, which most large counties in California have imposed upon their cities within the past year or so. Several Orange County cities are so angry about the $154 fee charged for each booking that they simply have not paid what is owed. Most say this is due to billing disagreements, but Irvine City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. expressed the general anger shared by cities when he said Irvine “disputes the booking charges and does not intend to pay the invoice.”

Brady probably was engaging in a little hyperbole; it is likely that the city will pay in the end, and it should. Even so, it was an odd stance, considering that the city routinely imposes fees upon taxpayers that they presumably are not thrilled to pay either. Brady’s statement also was symbolic of the larger problems of government financing. There is a need for the state to review the ways in which devices such as booking fees have pitted local governments in the scramble for revenue.

A fee for jail booking is one of the mechanisms finally given to counties to raise additional cash to pay for services. Counties administer some local programs but primarily exist to carry out state-mandated social services programs. However, the state regularly and shamelessly imposes mandates on counties that it is unable or unwilling to adequately finance. That has put counties in a vise against which they have had little recourse since Proposition 13, passed in 1978, severely limited their ability to raise local property tax revenue.

Booking fees have helped some, but a legislative report on this and similar measures, issued earlier this month, concluded that they also had “proven to be divisive” and had “created a great deal of ill will among local governments.” More than 100 cities in the state have sued to overturn the booking fees. (Orange County cities have not joined in the lawsuit, apparently because earlier they had worked out a plan under which the Board of Supervisors delayed implementation of the fees.) A hearing on the consolidated lawsuits is scheduled for next week in Sacramento, although the case is not expected to be decided until mid-1992.

The internecine battling continues, to the benefit of no one. But Irvine cannot rightly refuse to pay fees for jail bookings.