Supervisors Delay Decision on Closing Juvenile Camps

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors once again delayed a decision Tuesday on whether to close 18 of the county’s 19 juvenile probation camps, saying it desperately wanted to find stopgap funding to keep them open until a permanent solution is found.

“This is not the time to pull the plug,” Supervisor Mike Antonovich said. “The issue is public safety. Throwing in the towel is the wrong approach.”

Because of state and county budget problems, the county has been unable to find the $60 million a year needed to run the camps, many of which are located in the mountains around the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. County officials have said that about 2,000 inmates would have to be turned loose if the camps closed and if state institutions would not take them.

After voting 3 to 2 to reject a motion by Supervisor Ed Edelman to begin closing a quarter of the camps, and debating several other proposals, the five-member board put off a final vote until next Tuesday.

But the board did vote 4 to 1 to instruct Interim Chief Administrative Officer Harry Hufford to look for $4.6 million in the budget so the camps can be run through June 30.

The camps house about 2,000 juvenile offenders, 40% of them convicted of homicides, attempted murder, rape, carjackings and other violent crimes, said Barry Nidorf, the county’s chief probation officer.

The board also agreed to look into a proposal by Supervisor Gloria Molina to seek the state Legislature’s permission to allow it to raise court filing fees. Molina said such a move could bring the county as much as $20 million a year to help keep the camps open.

“All this does is say, let’s look at it, let’s see if it’s real,” Molina said of her proposal. “It may be a lousy source (of income), but it may be a promising source.”

Molina, a former assemblywoman, said Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood) had indicated he is interested in her proposal to raise filing fees, and may sponsor a bill to do so. Friedman is backing a bill that would provide state funding for the camps and is scheduled to be discussed today by the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee.

During a two-hour debate over the future of the probation camps, Hufford initially said there was no money available. “The budget has been going on smoke and mirrors since January,” he said, “and we’re running out of smoke and mirrors.”

After the vote, Hufford sighed and said he would follow orders. “We’ll have to go back and see what we can find,” he said.

Antonovich was the lone dissenter, protesting that the board would not consider his request to set aside $15 million to run the camps through August. Molina and Edelman opposed such a move, with Molina saying she did not want to make decisions based on next year’s uncertain budget.

Molina also sharply criticized Gov. Pete Wilson for taking the position recently that the state could not bail out the county and fund the camps. “All he needed to do was give us some ray of hope that he was willing to include us in his budget,” Molina said. “He turned us down flat.”

Citing Wilson’s rejection and other unsuccessful attempts at getting outside government funding, Edelman said he was getting frustrated with the board’s repeated attempts to postpone the inevitable closing of the camps.

“I don’t like it, no one likes it,” said Edelman. “But in all fairness, the time has come.”