ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Sheriff, Supervisors Must Talk

The problems of jail overcrowding and budget deficits are again colliding in Orange County, threatening to make a bad situation worse. On one side is the Board of Supervisors. On the other is Sheriff Brad Gates. Between the two is a chasm of silence, which is not the way things should be.

At the very least, Gates and the supervisors must talk to each other. Last week, Gates sent three of his top assistants forth to tell reporters that if the Sheriff’s Department budget were cut too much, the James A. Musick Branch Jail would have to close. That, of course, would intensify the overcrowding problem, since Musick houses more than 1,000 inmates. The state rates the capacity of the five Orange County jails at 3,203. The actual inmate count runs around 4,700 each day.

Gates is elected every four years, and is accountable not to the supervisors but to the voters. The board’s only leverage over the sheriff is controlling his budget. But that’s a slim lever, given a sheriff who is popular and a county where residents want strict law enforcement. The supervisors tread softly around the sheriff, and insist that in preliminary budget scenarios, his department is treated far more kindly than others.

Gates is always willing to speak out when he thinks his budget is threatened, and he’s a colorful man with a phrase. Consider his warning earlier this year that if the supervisors cut his funds too much, residents might just as well hand their children over to molesters. That may turn up the heat on the supervisors, but it does not shed much light on the problem, or help solve it.

The sheriff’s main problem is a federal court order limiting the jail population. The only solution is more beds, but the supervisors have been lackadaisical in addressing that issue. Two years ago, voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed sales tax hike to pay for a new jail. Since then, the supervisors have paid only sporadic attention to the need for a new jail. Jail space and budgets are both real, immediate problems. What is needed is more reasoned discussion on both issues between the sheriff and the supervisors.