Some Don’t Want Hand in ID System Fee

La Habra Police Chief Steven H. Staveley can recall with pride when the state’s computerized fingerprint system nailed its first criminal in 1985 and the killing spree of Richard Ramirez, the notorious Night Stalker, was ended.

Orange County had one of the first connecting networks to the Cal-ID Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which has since tracked 8,000 suspects in this county alone.

This month, the fate of Cal-ID has politicians torn between two of the strongest forces in their culture: the crucial need to appear strong on law enforcement and the desperate fear of imposing anything that smacks of a tax.

The problem facing elected officials is that Cal-ID’s limited memory is brimming over with prints of suspects, unidentified corpses and fugitives eluding warrants. Experts say it does its duty sluggishly, delaying checks on potential employees that school systems are mandated to run through its files.

Frank Fitzpatrick, forensic science director for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, anticipates a full-scale meltdown of the overburdened system in January 2000.

New technology can rectify the situation, Fitzpatrick said, and Orange County must have it.

While Cal-ID relies on humans to feed ink-on-paper prints into the system and then interpret results, the new system reads digitally produced photos and matches them in seconds, without the need for human intervention. Small, hand-held versions could fit in every police car, so officers could take and scan prints during even routine traffic stops.

Nearly everybody agrees the system is needed. As might be expected, the political debate in Orange County centers on how to cover the $10.5-million price tag.

Law enforcement associations across the state discussed the issue for two years and came up with what they contend is the only viable solution: a $1 fee imposed on vehicle registrations for the next five years. State legislation allowing counties to levy the fee was pushed by state Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and was finally signed by Gov. Pete Wilson last year. It took effect Jan. 1.

*

Lockyer personally took his Cal-ID plan on the road to the state’s 58 counties, where it was hailed as a technological miracle. The only place where he detected real problems was Orange County, said a Lockyer aide.

The Board of Supervisors has twice postponed a vote on the fee--at least in part so supervisors could get each city to approve resolutions supporting the fee, thus sharing the burden for passing a tax with elected officials in the county’s 31 cities. But the final vote is scheduled for the board’s Tuesday night meeting.

Cities were asked to pass resolutions supporting the $1 DMV fee, and Staveley, then president of the Orange County Chief’s & Sheriff’s Assn., began a whirlwind lobbying effort.

Should the fee fail to pass, each city would be asked to pay a portion based on population. Fees run from a low of $24,000 for Villa Park to $1.1 million for Anaheim.

To date, about half the cities, including Huntington Beach and Fullerton, have supported the fee. A few, Orange and Mission Viejo among them, said they would find the cash some other way. A handful simply refused to put the issue on their agendas.

According to Staveley and others who pushed for the fee, all other funding alternatives were exhaustively researched and dismissed.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer disputed that analysis and said the backers of the fee have put politicians in an unforgivably awkward position during an election year.

“It has put elected officials on the record for a tax increase,” he fumed. “That information will be used against them at the next election. That is terribly unfair.”

*

In Spitzer’s analysis, the county could raise the money for the new system. Furthermore, he added, he is not convinced that the system will cost $10 million. The basics could cost much less, and the peripheral “bells and whistles,” such as the hand-held scanners, aren’t needed, he said.

As it stands, it appears that the board would vote 3 to 2 in favor of the fee with Spitzer and Supervisor Jim Silva against it, but the legislation requires a 4-1 vote for the money to be appropriated.

Supervisor Tom Wilson said he is comfortable with the fee because it is linked to a specific use and has an expiration clause for 2003. “I would insist that it be out in five years,” he said.

Orange City Council members said they were not confident that the fee would end in 2003 and unanimously voted down a resolution supporting the fee, although they voiced full support for the new system. Instead, they said they would rather use reserved law enforcement grant money for their $455,000 share.

“I am not overjoyed about arbitrarily adding another dollar to what are one of the highest auto registration rates in the country,” said Councilman Mike Spurgeon. “But we’ve got to have this [system]. I think there are other, creative ways to come up with our share.”