Board OKs $2 Million for Sheriff’s Stations, but Bickers Over Planning

Even though it does not know how to pay the expected $36-million construction bill, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday to spend more than $2 million to design two refurbished sheriff’s stations.

Sheriff’s officials predicted that money to rebuild the cramped and crumbling 1940s-era stations in San Dimas and Lennox will be available and said they are needed to improve services to the public. “We need to have a proper working environment for our staff,” said Sharon Bunn, a sheriff’s division chief. “We need to have holding facilities that meet standards.”

But the debate over the plan provoked some supervisors to express growing concern over newly elected Sheriff Lee Baca’s ambitious spending proposals.

“We need to have full disclosure over what’s happening in the Sheriff’s Department,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “It’s been a Keystone Kops operation. . . . Ideas just keep coming over the transom without any quality control.”

Yaroslavsky and Supervisor Gloria Molina argued unsuccessfully that approving design of the refurbished stations without knowing how to fund their construction locks the county into potentially pricey projects without appropriate planning. They were able to table plans for a third station, in Palmdale, until budget deliberations in June.

County officials already have complained about the vague nature of the $300 million in projects for which the Sheriff’s Department initially sought money from next year’s budget. Only Friday did the massive law enforcement agency trim those requests to $63 million and itemize them in a list of priorities.

Whether the agency will get even a fraction of what it wants promises to be a central theme of this year’s county budget debate.

Baca initially vowed to “raise hell” if the supervisors--who supported his opponent in the November election--did not give him $100 million for 1,000 new deputies. He also has said he wants to reopen three jails and move into the vacant Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles, which would require earthquake retrofitting.

But the county’s budget office did not include those plans in the proposed spending plan it released Monday. Citing a lack of concrete proposals, it instead gave the $1.1-billion Sheriff’s Department an additional $58 million and 202 positions, but mostly for technical staff and to replace existing state or federal funding.

The department countered with a new, more detailed proposal that circulated Tuesday. It does not call for 1,000 new deputies, which would cost $85 million. Instead it asks for money for expanded stations and patrols in unincorporated county territory, adding about 370 sworn officers.

The proposal would also spend about $20 million to reopen the jails--Biscailuz Center, the Sybil Brand Institute and part of the sprawling Pitchess jail facility.

The supervisors did not even have a chance to discuss the new plan because they spent the morning wrangling over whether to fund the design of the expanded stations--which they authorized the department to undertake last year.

That resolution required county budget staff to report back to the supervisors with an overall spending plan before the board authorized the design work, but Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said his office has been unable to do so.

He said that allowing the designs would not force the county to build the stations. “Simply designing a facility does not commit you to building it,” he said.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich declared that it was time to move forward on rebuilding the stations. “Public safety is the fundamental responsibility of local government,” said Antonovich, who has vowed to seek more funds for the sheriff.

But Yaroslavsky pointed out that the Sheriff’s Department has vacancies for 600 deputies and is paying record levels of overtime--nearly $100 million this year. It is also spending money it could use on deputies to build “Taj Mahal” stations, he alleged.

“If public safety is the No. 1 issue, then the No. 1 priority ought to be to hire deputy sheriffs,” Yaroslavsky said.

Cmdr. Bill Stonich told the board that the sheriff is pushing hard to boost hiring. “I do recognize the frustration you have,” he said, “and I share it.”

Molina complained that the stations were being approved out of the standard county process for capital projects, but the board approved the projects anyway.

Yaroslavsky noted that Baca has yet to appear before the board to spell out his priorities, and later in the day delayed granting $185,000 to lease a new office for one unit of the department.

Supervisor Don Knabe chuckled, telling Yaroslavsky to “stop picking on the Sheriff’s Department.”

“I’m not picking on the Sheriff’s Department,” Yaroslavsky countered. “The Sheriff’s Department is picking on our budget.”