Sheriff’s Officials Say Jail Could Be Shut Again : Finances: The department plans to reopen the Mira Loma facility in Lancaster on Friday. But funding remains uncertain.

Following a temporary financial bailout, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials plan to return prisoners by Friday to the Mira Loma Jail in Lancaster they closed Tuesday, but warn that it may be shut again for lack of money in August.

Sheriff’s officials spent a harried day Wednesday calling back deputies and civilian employees who were reassigned elsewhere after Sheriff Sherman Block closed the jail at midday Tuesday, saying his department did not have the $5 million needed to keep it open. But in a surprise compromise with county supervisors just three hours later, Block agreed to reopen the facility after the supervisors came up with $4 million.

Sheriff’s officials said 150 to 200 male inmates will be returned to the medium-security facility by bus by midday Friday, with 100 female inmates due Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. The jail population is expected to reach 800 or more inmates within several weeks.

“It’s back to normal, at least until the next time,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Postmus. On Wednesday, he was overseeing a skeleton crew of employees trying to restore the jail to operational status after a weeks-long process of transferring inmates and supplies to prepare for the long-threatened closure.

Reopening Mira Loma by Friday will require a jigsaw puzzle of personnel reshuffling: Most of the Mira Loma staff that was transferred to the Pitchess jail at Castaic is being recalled from there, and about 60 Castaic employees who had sought transfers to Los Angeles area jails are being returned to Castaic.

Not everything is returning, however. Because of Mira Loma’s still-uncertain future, a shop where inmates sewed clothing for the county jail system will remain in Castaic after being transferred there recently at an estimated cost of $60,000.

Under the deal hammered out in closed session Tuesday, after the supervisors threatened to sue the sheriff, the Board of Supervisors agreed to provide Block with $4 million in emergency funding it had previously refused to release, and Block agreed to find $1 million in savings.

That funding is expected to help support the county’s jail system through July. But sheriff’s officials said that if their 1993-94 budget is cut by 16%, as is possible, four jails housing 7,700 prisoners may be closed by Aug. 1--Mira Loma, two jails at the Pitchess complex in Castaic and another in East Los Angeles.

“I think all four of those facilities are every bit as much at risk as they were before,” said Cmdr. Bob Spierer of the sheriff’s custody division. Of Mira Loma, Spierer said, “I find it hard to imagine, short of some real shift at the state level, how we could keep it open.”

County officials, who rely on state funding for much of their budget, are projecting a $1.4-billion deficit that would entail across-the-board cutbacks in county departments. But they won’t know the final outcome until after the state adopts its budget, perhaps in mid-June.

Any cutback probably would affect Mira Loma because the 40-year-old facility, which can house up to 1,943 inmates, remains at the top of the sheriff’s closure list. Block had warned the supervisors since late April that three or four jails would close unless he received more money.

Next on the closure list, depending on the severity of any budget cuts, would be the Ranch Facility at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic (2,366-inmate capacity), the Biscailuz Center in East Los Angeles (1,470 capacity), and the South Facility in Castaic (1,900 capacity).

Sheriff’s officials insisted until Tuesday that Block would not relent unless he was guaranteed enough funding for the full year, specifically so the department would not face the prospect it now faces: of closing Mira Loma, reopening it temporarily, then closing it again.

Spierer said the process thus far has been nerve-racking for Mira Loma’s about 170 employees. “They had finally resolved themselves to the fact the closure was really going to happen, only to wake up and find out they are being called back to a fairly uncertain future,” he said.

* JAIL CLOSURES AHEAD?: Block warns that $4 million in emergency funds will only last a month. B8