Wrong Time, Wrong Place

California’s budget woes may be forcing Gov. Pete Wilson to reconsider his support of the controversial Crown Coach prison site, east of downtown Los Angeles. That’s good. Construction could cost as much as $147 million at a time when the state cannot even afford to open a new prison that is nearing completion at Lancaster in the Antelope Valley.

Right now the state prison population tops 104,000. That is 175% of intended capacity. Women’s facilities and minimum-security prisons are particularly overcrowded. Reception centers, the entry point into the system, also are filled to nearly double the intended capacity. The Crown Coach facility was designed as a reception center.

In exchange for Wilson’s agreement to drop the Crown Coach site, Latino legislators would support additional funding for three new prisons elsewhere in the state and allocate $30 million to open the prison in Lancaster. It would be difficult to find that extra money in a deficit-plagued budget that has little give.

Prisons are constructed with money allocated from state prison bonds. That money can’t be used to finance operating costs. But the bond money can be shifted to expand existing prison facilities and relieve severely overcrowded facilities.

Such a spending approach makes sense. Budget constraints demand new thinking on spending in all areas, especially when it comes to a major expense such as prisons.

And there is no sign of let-up in the Eastside’s staunch opposition to the Crown Coach prison, an opposition that continues to delay construction and to boost costs.

The site has been under consideration for years. Gov. George Deukmejian and the California Legislature agreed in September of 1982 to situate a state prison in Los Angeles County. The Crown Coach site, two miles east of the downtown Civic Center, was identified in 1985.

Community opposition, led by then-Assemblywoman Gloria Molina, blocked progress until a legislative compromise was reached to require the construction of one prison in a rural area, such as the Antelope Valley, and one in an urban area of Los Angeles County.

That arrangement is only fair, because more than a third of the state’s prisoners come from L.A. County. But downtown and the Eastside already hold numerous detention facilities. Can’t the governor and the Legislature find another central site in Los Angeles, in a year when budget problems are less pressing?

Gov. Wilson is at least showing a great deal more flexibility than his predecessor on this issue. Wilson is willing to talk with the Latino Legislative Caucus, which is trying hard to find the money needed to make the new prison compromise work.