Plan to Build Prison in L.A. Scuttled After 7-Year Fight : Legislation: Wilson signs bill that abandons a ‘share the pain’ compromise and allows a new facility in Lancaster to open in February.

Climaxing a seven-year fight, Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday signed legislation that scuttles plans for a bitterly opposed prison near downtown Los Angeles.

The action smashes a 1987 “share the pain” compromise that required construction of the prison proposed near downtown to begin before a prison could open in Lancaster in the 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 for a net gain of 5,000 prison beds.

In a 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 planned prison would have been built on 20 acres southeast of downtown near 12th Street and Santa Fe Avenue.

“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.

Brown said protests, largely by Latinos in Los Angeles who have fought the 1,450-bed prison in since the mid-1980s, also played a role in Wilson’s decision. Residents had contended that their neighborhood is already overburdened with other local and federal detention facilities.

“His (Wilson’s) instructions to us are to site prisons where people want them,” Brown said.

Reaction from community activists and Latino lawmakers who helped to craft the Torres measure was joyous, coming just before Wednesday’s observance of Mexican Independence Day.

“The community is very, very happy,” said Msgr. John Moretta, pastor of 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 added. “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 at 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 described the governor’s action as the best Mexican Independence Day gift the governor could have given him. Among those he credited for the success of the measure were Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who was once called a “sellout” for initially supporting the project. Torres also praised other Latino lawmakers, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which lobbied for Torres’ bill, and community groups in Los Angeles.

Torres indicated that Wilson’s action is likely to give the Republican governor a political boost 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.

“Happy days are here,” said Polanco, who also lavished praise on Wilson for signing the measure.

Polanco and other Latino lawmakers first approached the Wilson Administration about two months ago with the prison package that included canceling the downtown site, and found a receptive audience. In subsequent negotiations, the chief snag had been finding a way to finance the opening of the Lancaster prison. That part of the prisons deal remains unfinished business.

Polanco said he has agreed to introduce a measure when the Legislature next meets, possibly in October, earmarking funds for Lancaster.

The Torres measure also calls for an appropriation of $207 million for a new prison near the facility at Soledad and $387 million to build previously approved prisons in Madera and Susanville. But Wilson, citing the state’s poor fiscal condition, deleted funds set aside in the Torres bill to open a new prison in Delano.

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.

In 1985, a push was made to finance the prison. But a bill to authorize the construction fell one vote short of passage in the Senate amid controversy over the state’s intention to buy the property, partly owned by Crown Coach International, without first filing an environmental impact report.

A month later, construction seemed assured after the Administration of former Gov. George Deukmejian agreed to major concessions sought by Democratic opponents. Building a prison in urban Los Angeles was a cornerstone of Deukmejian’s prison expansion program. At the time, Torres said the compromise was the best he could hope for. But within days, the plan was killed.

A year later, however, Polanco cast a crucial vote that revived the Los Angeles prison just hours after he was sworn into office. Eventually, a new “sagebrush-barrio” compromise was hammered out that linked the Los Angeles and Lancaster prisons.

It required that construction of the prison near downtown start before the doors could open at the facility in Lancaster.

An estimated $40 million has been spent on the now defunct $150-million downtown project. State officials hope to recoup between $20 million and $25 million by selling the site, which several times had been rejected by corrections officials as being too small. In 1985, Crown Coach was partly owned by Llewellyn Werner, a longtime aide to former Democratic Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich first notified Deukmejian Administration officials that the site was for sale.

Antonovich lobbied for the Crown Coach site after state officials had tentatively decided to locate a prison in his district near Lancaster.

Sen. Newton Russell (R-Glendale), who represents the Antelope Valley, said he had 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. The prison had been set to open in October but was expected to be delayed for a year because of the lack of funds.

But on the other hand, Russell said “it’s a little galling” that the “pain for pain” agreement that required a prison in Republican-leaning Lancaster and one in Democratic urban Los Angeles has been abrogated.

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this story.