How 2 Lawmen Outfoxed Their Foes : Finances: In budget-slashing era, Ventura County sheriff and D.A. sewed up continued funding for their agencies. They used a maneuver that was unique in the state and that confounded critics.

Sheriff Larry Carpenter gets mobbed these days by colleagues across the state. So does Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

The word is out. These two lawmen have pulled off a bloodless political coup in Ventura County, combining their power to become a virtually untouchable force in county government.

Although careful not to gloat, Carpenter and Bradbury acknowledge their good political fortune to other law enforcement leaders eager to learn exactly how they did it:

In the span of a year, Ventura County has gone further than any other county in California to shield public safety agencies from the budget ax.

With petitions signed by 47,000 voters, the sheriff and district attorney have rewritten the political rules at the expense of the County Board of Supervisors, which can no longer touch their budgets--no matter what happens to other public services.

In future years, their budgets will grow with automatic increases to keep pace with inflation. And they will have exclusive rights, with three other public safety agencies, to tens of millions of dollars a year from a special half-cent sales tax.

The final kicker: None of this can change without approval of the county’s voters.

Their new power can be easily measured:

In the last four years, the combined budgets for the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office have grown by $35 million, while most other county departments have seen no gains or have suffered reductions.

Even during this year’s budget crisis, Carpenter and Bradbury walked away with an additional $5.7 million. That compares to cuts of $2 million for mental health, $1.6 million for the county hospital and $1 million for social services.

“They are more powerful than ever,” said former Supervisor Madge Schaefer. “It is the old adage: He who has the gold, makes the rules. They’ve got all of the gold. What does the board have left to do?”

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Ventura County has always had a law and order tilt.

But when Bradbury was first elected district attorney in 1978, Carpenter was just a lieutenant in charge of special investigations. His predecessor, Sheriff John Gillespie, was not a Bradbury ally in budget fights, and the district attorney was usually on his own.

He also faced a formidable ideological foe in the county’s former chief administrative officer--Richard Wittenberg, who took his job in 1979 and served as the county’s budget point man.

Wittenberg became the counterweight to Bradbury.

The two clashed repeatedly about the district attorney’s budget over the years. And as dollars from Sacramento grew more scarce, their relationship continued in a downward spiral.

It was in Sacramento where the seeds were sown for the final battle between Bradbury and Wittenberg--this time with Sheriff Carpenter playing a pivotal role.

Ventura County lost about $64 million in the last five years, as the Legislature shifted property tax dollars away from counties to patch holes in the state’s budget. To help recover those losses, Gov. Pete Wilson proposed that counties support renewal of a half-cent sales tax for public safety in 1993.

Desperate county supervisors across California jumped at the opportunity. So did those in Ventura County, who asked Bradbury and Carpenter to lead the local campaign for Proposition 172, the statewide ballot measure.

Although the governor promised that the tax dollars would go to public safety, the initiative did not specify which agencies would get the money. And voters, egged on by anti-tax activists, expressed doubts about the true intentions of the Board of Supervisors.

Bradbury and Carpenter vividly recall the skepticism they met from voters while stumping for the tax initiative.

“Every place I spoke, the No. 1 question was, ‘How do we know the board will spend the money on public safety?’ ” Carpenter recalled. “I said, ‘I guess we don’t really know. But I promise, I will hold their feet to the fire.’ And I kept my promise.”

Proposition 172 passed easily in the November, 1993, election--a remarkable victory in a state where voters loathe raising taxes.

Ventura County law enforcement officials soon came calling on the supervisors, pressing them to formally commit the sales tax dollars to the sheriff, the district attorney, corrections services and the public defender. The supervisors approved a resolution March 1, 1994, that promised to do so.

Reflecting back, former Supervisor Maria VanderKolk said the supervisors made the agreement before they understood how few dollars they would have left for the county’s other 22 departments.

“They really forced our hand in establishing a deal with Proposition 172 dollars before the board was ready,” VanderKolk said.

Within hours of the vote, Wittenberg summoned Carpenter and Bradbury to his office, so they would work out the details of the supervisors’ promise.

In the private meeting, he asked them to relinquish claim to about $13 million of unspent sales tax revenue collected before the Proposition 172 vote in exchange for a promise that their budgets would not face cuts during the upcoming summer’s budget sessions, according to Bradbury and Carpenter.

A deal was struck, they said. Bradbury and Carpenter were elated. But a few months later, Wittenberg stopped Carpenter for a word. He was agitated, Carpenter recalled. Wittenberg was saying the budget shortfall was worse than expected. The county could not afford the millions needed to open the sheriff’s new jail on time.

Carpenter says he initially shrugged off the warnings, chalking it up to Wittenberg’s perennial sky-is-falling budget forecasts. But Wittenberg persisted.

When the supervisors unexpectedly cut into the sheriff’s and district attorney’s budgets in July, 1994, Carpenter grew incensed that Wittenberg and the supervisors had reneged on the earlier promises.

“That set me off,” Carpenter said. “My word means everything. I’ve worked my whole career at that. If circumstances change, I have to honor my word and fall on my sword.”

Wittenberg says his recollection is foggy about the agreement struck in his office. “I don’t remember that specifically, but that’s possible,” he said. “We had some agreements and some misunderstandings.”

Wittenberg remembers seeking out Carpenter later that spring. “There were a couple of times where I thought something meant one thing and Larry thought it meant another. So I had to go back to him and say, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.’ ”

Bitter about the board’s actions, Carpenter and Bradbury formed a group of public safety officials that began plotting a populist campaign to strip the supervisors of their power over law enforcement budgets.

By last fall, the coalition of law enforcement officials and citizen boosters had drafted a countywide ballot measure guaranteeing that all Proposition 172 sales tax money would go to the budgets of the sheriff, the district attorney, the Probation Department, public defender and Fire Department.

And it went one step further. It forced supervisors to continue the full funding of these agencies with property taxes as it had in previous years, and provide them with annual increases to meet inflation.

That way, the supervisors could not siphon away property tax dollars from those agencies to offset what they get from the half-cent sales tax--as has been done in other counties.

At the beginning of this year, the coalition kicked off a signature drive to qualify the measure for the ballot. Standing beside the sheriff and district attorney were two new county supervisors--Frank Schillo and Judy Mikels--who were elected with the sheriff’s help.

Joining them was a third supervisor, veteran John Flynn. Together the trio formed a new majority on the board.

The kickoff coincided with Wittenberg’s last day in office. He had decided to take another job in Santa Clara County after 27 years at the Ventura County government.

In three months, Bradbury and Carpenter collected thousands more signatures than they needed. The next stop was the Board of Supervisors, which had the option of adopting the measure or putting it before the voters.

With little fanfare, the new majority voted the initiative into law rather than hold a costly special election. Board Chairwoman Maggie Kildee and Supervisor Susan Lacey cast dissenting votes, but the battle was over. Carpenter and Bradbury had won.

“We have given them another tool to become more powerful,” Kildee said. “They call the shots now. They will do what they want to do.”

No other county has gone as far to guarantee that all Proposition 172 dollars go to expand law enforcement budgets.

“It’s unique,” said Carolyn McIntyre, legislative representative for the California State Assn. of Counties. “Everyone has been quite surprised by the Ventura action.”

VanderKolk said she and her fellow supervisors boxed themselves in with early commitments to spend all of the money on law enforcement--promises they grew to regret. At the same time, she suggested that the sheriff and district attorney took advantage of the situation to grab every available cent.

Carpenter and Bradbury said their intent was never to gain more power or influence. Instead, they said, they were forced to protect their budgets because county supervisors reneged on promises.

“For so long, it seemed I’d spend half of the day fighting crooks and half of the day fighting the folks across the way,” Bradbury said. “Now, thank the Lord, I just have to fight crooks.”