L.A. Prison Scuttled, Lancaster’s Will Open in February : Corrections: Wilson signs bill that abandons a ‘share the pain’ compromise with East Los Angeles and climaxes a seven-year battle.

Climaxing a seven-year fight, Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation Monday aimed at opening a new prison in the Antelope Valley next February while scuttling the bitterly opposed companion prison near downtown Los Angeles.

The action junks a 1987 “share the pain” compromise between the two parties in the state Legislature that was dubbed the “sagebrush-barrio” plan. It required construction to begin on a prison in a heavily Democratic neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles before a prison could open in Lancaster in the heavily Republican Antelope Valley.

The measure, authored by Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), allows the nearly completed 2,200-bed Lancaster prison to open in February and sets aside funds to build three new prisons elsewhere around the state, providing a net gain of 5,000 prison beds.

In a prepared statement issued Monday night, Wilson said, “Our prison system houses over 107,000 inmates in facilities designed for less than 60,000 prisoners. This legislation will allow us to build the facilities needed to keep criminals off the street and behind bars where they belong.

“At the same time, the bill allows us to end the controversy surrounding the construction of the reception center in downtown Los Angeles,” Wilson said.

“The bottom line is we need to build prisons . . . and this was the only game in town,” said Craig Brown, undersecretary of the state Youth and Adult Correctional Agency.

Also, he said, opening the doors of the Lancaster facility will help relieve prison overcrowding.

Brown said protests--largely by Latino residents who have fought the 1,450-bed prison near downtown Los Angeles since the mid 1980s--also played a role in Wilson’s decision. Community residents opposed the proposed prison because they contended their neighborhood was a dumping ground for other local and federal jails.

The governor’s “instructions to us are to site prisons where people want them,” Brown said.

The $207-million Lancaster prison, originally scheduled to open in October, had previously been expected to stand empty for a year for lack of operating funds in the state budget. Brown now expects it to open in February. He said it will take until then to put the finishing touches on the prison, hire employees and begin to assign prisoners.

However, before it can officially open, the Legislature will need to pass another bill to transfer funds from the downtown Los Angeles prison. Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), an architect of the prison deal, said he will introduce a measure to, in effect, shift $17 million in funds set aside for the Los Angeles prison to the Lancaster prison.

Action on that measure could come as soon as next month.

Brown said another $5.5 million in general funds would come from the state’s small reserve.

Sen. Newton R. Russell (R-Glendale), who represents the Antelope Valley, voiced mixed feelings about Wilson’s action. On the one hand, he said, he was pleased that the Lancaster prison would open and bring jobs to the Antelope Valley.

But on the other, Russell said “it’s a little galling” that the “pain-for-pain” agreement has been abrogated.

Assemblyman Phillip Wyman (R-Tehachapi), who represents the Lancaster area, said the prison issue was the most traumatic in his 14 years as a legislator and he hopes that the state Department of Corrections, not legislators, makes such decisions in the future.

“Let’s learn from this whole process--it’s not a good way to site prisons when you cram them down people’s throats,” he said.

He predicted that in time, Los Angeles interests may want to have a prison in the downtown area of the city because of the jobs it would create. Opposition to the prison in the Lancaster area was eventually supplanted by the desire for a sizable state payroll.

Lancaster Mayor George Root stressed the economic benefits Monday, saying he was “really pleased” that the bill had passed.

“We’ve been working hard with our legislators to get it open. It is going to create 800 jobs . . . a boon to our community.

“In the beginning we didn’t want the prison here at all,” he conceded. “We were adamant this wasn’t going to open until East L.A. opened.” But when the economy turned down, he said, “We decided we didn’t care about East L.A. We needed this one staffed and money put into our local economy.”

Danielle Marvin Lewis, a Lancaster real estate broker who led Antelope Valley residents opposed to the prison, said opponents were not blind to the local economic benefits but objected to the site.

“That payroll dollar would be the same to the Antelope Valley if it was located 18 miles west of town,” she said. “I think the community is yet to see the impact that this prison will have.

“What is the saddest part for me is we were led to believe that ‘pain-for-pain’ concept . . . The East L.A. people have proven if you continue to fight you win,” Lewis said.

East Los Angeles critics stepped up their efforts against the downtown prison in the wake of a state Supreme Court decision that removed the final legal hurdle to construction of the facility.

Polanco and other Latino lawmakers first approached the Wilson administration about two months ago with the prison package that included opening the Lancaster facility and found a receptive audience. In subsequent negotiations, the chief snag was finding the way to finance the opening of the Lancaster prison.

Latino lawmakers, who helped craft the Torres measure, and community activists reacted with joy to Wilson’s action, noting that it came on the eve of Wednesday’s observance of Mexican Independence Day.

“The community is very, very happy,” said Msgr. John Moretta, pastor of the Resurrection Catholic Church and a member of the Coalition Against the Prison in East Los Angeles. “It’s an important thing for the community to pull together.”

Shouting, “We won the war,” about 200 Eastside residents and elected officials gathered at Moretta’s church Monday night to celebrate victory.

“The politicians thought we wouldn’t fight but we united and said, ‘Ya basta, enough, this is a dumping ground no more,’ ” said Lucy Ramos, president of a 400-member group called Mothers of East Los Angeles, which was organized at the church to defeat the prison project.

“The kids around here were babies when we started,” Ramos said. “Now they, too, will fight for what they believe in because we showed them their voices count.”

“That’s right!,” said Aurora Castillo, a co-founder of the group. “We turned into lionesses to protect our children.”

During a news conference in which mariachis played and elected officials praised the community, 14-year-old Ramiro Martin del Campo, his eyes glistening, said: “They did something right. I’m proud of them.”

Torres indicated that the action probably will provide a political boost for the Republican governor in the Latino community.

“This is an incredible historical move that will create inroads to ensure that Pete Wilson is a hero in the Latino community because he’s been able to see beyond the politics as usual,” Torres said.

The seeds of the controversy over the Los Angeles prison go back a decade.

In the early 1980s, lawmakers began to resent the fact that Los Angeles was producing almost 40% of the state’s male convicts but did not have a prison. As a result, lawmakers mandated in 1982 that a prison be built somewhere in Los Angeles County.

Times Staff Writer Louis Sahagun and Correspondent Blaine Halley contributed to this story.