D. A., Sheriff May Take Over Added Duties

Faced with a $20-million operating deficit, Ventura County supervisors are banking on the sheriff and district attorney to take over additional services to help out with the county’s financial crunch.

As they kick off a weeklong series of budget study sessions this morning, board members will be looking to law enforcement officials for a helping hand since their departments are immune from the county’s fiscal troubles.

An ordinance approved by the board last year exempts the sheriff, district attorney, public defender and corrections services from budget cuts. It also requires the county to cover inflationary costs and salary increases in the same departments. These costs make up about $7 million of the county’s $20-million budget shortfall.

To help ease the pain on other departments, Supervisor Frank Schillo said this week that he and Supervisor Judy Mikels have met with Sheriff Larry Carpenter and Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury to discuss transferring other programs and services under their control.

In fact, Bradbury said Wednesday that his office has already agreed to take over welfare fraud investigations. Although he will get some additional money in the transfer, Bradbury said the move will save the county about $150,000 in the new fiscal year and as much as $200,000 the next fiscal year.

“I told the supervisors that we were willing to help in any way we can,” he said. “And this seems to be one of the things that they were interested in having us do.”

Bradbury said he is also willing to consider taking back responsibility for legal services for abused and neglected children. Since 1989, the county has contracted with private attorneys for this service at a cost of about $300,000 a year. Bradbury said his office could do it for half that amount.

Carpenter said he is also willing to consider any suggestions from the board, but he said that so far, there have been no specific proposals put on the table.

The sheriff made it clear, however, that this does not mean his department will accept more responsibilities without more money.

“If it’s law enforcement-related . . . and if funds come with it, we would be willing to do it,” he said. “But we can’t take patrol cars off the street to do some other function that we currently don’t do.”

The only exception, Carpenter said, would be if a particular service or program was a “perfect match” for his department, and only then if the merger paid for itself through increased efficiency. But the sheriff said he could not think of any such program.

One suggestion that came up during budget talks last year was for the Sheriff’s Department to assume control of the medical examiner’s office, but Carpenter said there has been no mention of this in recent talks with supervisors. “I don’t think it will be proposed,” he said.

Although public safety departments are exempt from budget cuts, nearly all other county departments and agencies have been asked to prepare ways to cut their individual budgets as much as 25%.

The ordinance approved by the board last year forever protects public safety agencies from cutbacks and guarantees that all revenue generated from Proposition 172 will go to the sheriff, district attorney, public defender, corrections and fire services. The half-cent sales tax measure is expected to bring in about $32 million this year.

But Bradbury pointed out that the bulk of the Proposition 172 money--about $15 million--goes toward operation of the Todd Road Jail, which opened last year.

If the statewide sales tax measure had not been approved by voters in 1993, Bradbury said, money for the jail would still have to “come out of the hides of other departments” because county residents have said this is where they want it to go. More than 50,000 voters signed a petition favoring the public safety ordinance.

“It’s kind of convenient to make law enforcement the bad guy in this whole thing,” Bradbury said. “But the fact that we got the 172 money is benefiting other departments.”