COUNTY ELECTION / PROPOSITION A : Prop. A, to Raise Funds for Jails, Police, Is Given Little Chance : Taxes: Even backers say the recession and need for two-thirds margin appear to doom measure.

Even the proponents of Proposition A, an embattled referendum if ever there was one, admit its chances for passage Nov. 3 range somewhere between slim and none.

Proposition A would provide as much as $125 million a year for jails, courthouses, a crime lab, a communications complex, officers to run the facilities and teams of new personnel charged with law enforcement.

But a two-thirds majority is required for a measure that, in 1988, passed by a margin of 50.6%. Even some who ardently supported the proposition back then see its placement on the ballot this year largely as a waste of time and money.

County Board of Supervisors member John MacDonald, for instance, criticized the $50,000 cost of putting the measure on the ballot when its chances for passage are remote.

Despite being approved in 1988, Proposition A was overturned Feb. 13 by the state Supreme Court, which ruled that it required a two-thirds margin of approval under Proposition 13, the landmark 1978 tax-cutting measure.

The court’s decision stunned local officials, who had already collected $350 million under a half-cent San Diego County sales tax increase that was levied as soon as the measure was approved.

The 4th District Court of Appeals has decided to hold a hearing Nov. 4--the day after the election--to determine the fate of the money.

The funds have been sitting in a special account, frozen since the state Supreme Court ruled that the tax hike had not been properly enacted. The account earns about $2.5 million in interest each month.

The court’s ruling forced local retailers to stop collecting the tax, which dropped the sales tax from 8.25% to 7.75%. The county wants the $350 million, but the Libertarian Party, which brought the suit challenging the tax, wants it refunded to taxpayers in the form of a 1-cent rollback.

Proposition A has other problems that dampen its chances. Supervisor and San Diego mayoral candidate Susan Golding supports it, but notes that its lack of a “sunset” provision works against it.

In other words, if approved, it offers no timetable for when the county will stop collecting the tax.

“I’d rather be up-front and say we don’t know how long it’s going to take,” Supervisor George Bailey said recently, when the board agreed by a 4-1 vote to put the measure before voters, despite its chances. “When we have these (criminal-justice) costs under control, then we will reduce it from one-half to one-quarter cent.”

But in the words of the Libertarian Party official whose suit killed the 1988 victory, such talk is moot.

“It’s dead,” Dick Rider said in a recent interview. “It’s a waste of time. There’s no way on God’s earth that they can come up with a two-thirds majority.”

“The worst thing we can do is not try, considering our problems,” said Bailey, the measure’s sponsor and an outgoing supervisor.

If somehow the measure does pass, it is expected to generate $1.6 billion over the next decade. Proponents argue that inmate Johnaton George might not have escaped, killing a motorist and injuring a sheriff’s deputy, had funds from Proposition A never been touched.

George, they argue, would have been guarded by two deputies instead of one, a 58-year-old woman whose gun he seized en route to stealing a car and shooting its driver. The extra money would have provided an additional officer in the prisoners van from which he escaped, defenders of the proposition say.

Funds from the measure would ease crowding in the county’s jails, which experts label among the worst in the nation. Many courthouses are dilapidated and overburdened, and the Sheriff’s Department says staffing in jails and on the streets is dangerously thin. A 1,500-bed maximum-security facility at East Mesa remains unopened because the county has no money to operate it.

Nevertheless, many say it’s a terrible time to be asking for such funding, especially with soaring unemployment, deficits growing in every corner and the electorate in no mood for tax increases.

Proponents agree that no one objects, in principle, to enhanced law enforcement. They just don’t want to pay for it right now.