City of Orange Sues to Block Jail Expansion

Seeking to block expansion of the Theo Lacy Branch Jail, the city of Orange charged in a lawsuit Wednesday that the county has endangered the lives of local residents and reneged on its promises.

The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, comes three weeks after the county adopted a plan that could ultimately put 900 new beds at the Orange jail, adding two additional barracks to the facility.

And what had been a tense relationship between the county and the city over Orange County’s worsening jail shortage now moves into a stage of outright confrontation in the courts.

“I told you so,” a bitter Supervisor Don R. Roth said when told of the filing of the lawsuit. Roth, who represents Orange, was the only one of the five supervisors to vote against the Theo Lacy expansion on Jan. 28.

“All I can say is that things are pretty bad now” between the county and the city of Orange, Roth said. “The city just feels they can’t trust the county on anything, and that doesn’t help a relationship.”

City of Orange officials are upset not only over the prospect of more cells at Theo Lacy but by the recent disclosure that the Sheriff’s Department has upgraded its inmate system to bring more serious offenders into Orange. They maintain that county officials have a “hidden agenda” to turn Theo Lacy into a maximum-security facility, augmenting the main jail in Santa Ana.

“This is just the first, unfortunately, in many more actions to come to get the county’s attention,” said Orange Councilman Mike Spurgeon, who has led the city’s efforts on the jail. “We have to protect our interests.”

Spurgeon said he believes the courts may be the only way to resolve the dispute. “We’re not doing much talking now. . . . There’s no dialogue to speak of at all--just a lot of stonewalling over at the sheriff’s office,” he said.

The aim of the lawsuit, attorneys for the city say, is twofold: to block the eventual expansion of the Theo Lacy Jail in the 500 block of The City Drive, and to eliminate the housing of maximum-security inmates.

Under an environmental review completed in 1990, the county agreed “that the inmate population to be housed at the Theo Lacy Jail Facility (would) be limited to minimum- and medium-security prisoners,” the lawsuit says.

Sheriff Brad Gates, named as a defendant along with his department, is now breaking that agreement regularly, the lawsuit claims.

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Richard J. Olson said that Gates and other department officials would not be able to discuss pending litigation.

At the time the Board of Supervisors approved its latest Theo Lacy plan on Jan. 28, Gates acknowledged for the first time that overcrowding has forced him to reclassify inmates, bringing more serious offenders into Theo Lacy and into the James A. Musick Branch Jail in Lake Forest.

The Sheriff’s Department has refused to detail what the reclassification system has meant in practice, but lawyers for the city of Orange maintain that it has effectively brought maximum-security offenders into their community.

As a result, the lawsuit claims that the new system will mean more drugs in the neighborhood, a greater risk to the safety of area residents and business people, and lower property values.

The jail sits just across the street from The City Shopping Center and just several hundred feet from the Orangewood Children’s Home.

The lawsuit does not deal directly with the proposed expansion of the Theo Lacy Jail by 909 beds--in part, attorneys said, because the county has not yet proceeded with any definite plans for the project.

But the lawyers hope they can use the lawsuit to block the expansion by holding the county to the terms of the 1990 environmental review, since the review set a 1,326-bed limit on the capacity of the jail, they say.

County officials have maintained that the 1990 agreement that grew out of that environmental review is worthless because it was never signed by a required third party: the owner of The City mall.

But city officials vigorously dispute that interpretation, saying the county is muddying the issue with technicalities and loopholes.

Roger R. Stanton, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors, was not available for comment Wednesday on the lawsuit. But Robert L. Richardson, his top aide on jail issues, challenged the city to back up its contentions that the jail could hurt public safety and the local economy.

“Where’s the evidence?” Richardson asked. “It just really works you up to hear those kinds of claims tossed around.”

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said she understood that Orange city officials “are going to do what they have to do. But we really don’t have a choice. It’s really for everyone’s benefit that people who break the law are taken off the streets.”