Block Fighting a New Round of Budget Cutbacks : Spending: Sheriff says the 24% decrease proposed by county official would force him to close seven jails.

Sheriff Sherman Block--who has been highly successful over the last three years in saving his department from the most severe budget cuts--launched a new effort Wednesday to avoid another round of cuts, some of the deepest yet proposed.

Block said at his monthly news conference that the 24% cuts proposed by county Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed would devastate law enforcement in the areas patrolled by his department and force him to close up to seven county jails.

Reed’s cuts would go into effect for the remaining four months of this fiscal year and remain in place all of next year.

So many jail beds would be lost, the sheriff said, that virtually every one of the 7,000 prisoners who has been sentenced would have to be released, leaving in custody only the 14,000 awaiting trial or in trial.

These figures do not include inmates in the state or federal prison systems, which would not be affected by county budget cuts.

About $570 million of the department’s $1.1-billion annual budget comes from the county, with the bulk of the remainder coming from the cities that contract for sheriff’s services and the federal government. So when Block speaks of a 24% cut in county funds, he is speaking of more than $130 million.

The sheriff said that anything over $25 million would gravely impair the department’s ability to adequately perform its duties, and the same would be true if there were more than $6 million in cuts the rest of this fiscal year, which ends June 30.

In the past, Block’s first steps toward closing county jails have prompted quick action by county supervisors to restore many of the cuts. Block said Wednesday that he hopes the present board will also recognize that the Sheriff’s Department must be one of the county’s highest priorities and act to revise Reed’s figures.

Nonetheless, Block said, he recognizes that this year “there is no question we are going to have to take some curtailments.”

Closing jails and freezing hiring would probably lead to a mass exodus of sheriff’s personnel to law enforcement agencies where hiring and promotions are proceeding normally, he said.