Plan to Open 216 Jail Beds at East Mesa Postponed : Government: County supervisors refused to spend more money without assurances that funds would be available to keep the new facility open next year.

Increasingly concerned by growing financial woes, the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday postponed action on a proposal to open 216 badly needed beds in the county’s East Mesa jail.

The action was at least a temporary rebuff to Supervisor Susan Golding, who had proposed diverting more than $400,000 earmarked for courtroom furniture to hire 36 new deputy sheriffs needed to fully open the medium security jail.

Citing the crucial need for jail space in a county where a backlog of 700,000 arrest warrants have gone unserved, Golding termed her colleagues’ reluctance to reallocate the funds “absolutely beyond my comprehension.”

But after being briefed on mounting deficits in the Sheriff’s Department, supervisors Brian Bilbray, Leon Williams and John MacDonald, a majority of the five-member board, refused to spend more money on new jail beds without assurances funds would be available to keep the jail space open during the next fiscal year.

“Where are we going to get the money to make up the deficits that already exist?” Williams asked. “I’m just personally not willing to go further right now.”

Instead, the board voted to freeze the $428,000 earmarked for furniture in eight temporary courtrooms scheduled to open in the Home Savings Tower in May. After a closed session discussion of litigation on jail over-crowding, the board directed preparation of an emergency report on the Sheriff’s Department’s financial picture and how the 216 new East Mesa jail beds could be opened.

The 2,000-bed jail was completed last October, but to date just 296 prisoners have been transferred to the medium-security facility on Otay Mesa. The remaining beds in that jail, and 1,500 more in an adjacent maximum-security facility, remain vacant because the county has no money to staff and operate them.

Roache reported Tuesday that, even without opening new jail beds, he expects to be $3 million to $4 million over-budget by the end of the fiscal year June 30--a debt the supervisors will have to make up despite a $30 million deficit for county government as a whole.

Roache said county Auditor Rod Calvao is forecasting a $9.7 million deficit for the Sheriff’s Department. Calvao’s figures include about $5 million in jail booking fees that municipal governments have withheld from the county while a lawsuit over the payments is being adjudicated.

“(How) are we going to pay the bills come the last part of the year?” asked Supervisor Brian Bilbray. “What do we do in the last two months, when we don’t have the money to pay deputies?”

But a Superior Court judge is simultaneously pressuring the county to find a way to open the East Mesa jails to relieve overcrowding in two other county jails.

Judge James Malkus has ordered the county to explore the use of volunteers to free Sheriff’s deputies for jail duty, and to submit a “definite” plan for opening the East Mesa jail and vacant Descanso honor camp by July 1.