Jail-Airport Ballot Measure Worries Sheriff

“Many thousands” of criminals would be released early from jail if a March ballot initiative backed by anti-airport forces passes, Sheriff Mike Carona said in a report released Thursday.

In his strongest broadside yet, Carona said passage of the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative would hold the jail planning process hostage to a nearly impossible mandate of 66% voter approval, jeopardizing investments of time and money while jails bulge with too many prisoners. About 19,300 inmates in Orange County were released early last year because of overcrowded conditions, he said.

If the initiative passes, “public safety and quality of life in Orange County will be diminished,” Carona said in the report.

In an interview late Thursday, Carona said: “Getting a two-thirds vote is virtually impossible for anything. Clearly, we have no hostility to the [initiative]. But it limits our ability to do what needs to be done.”

The measure would require two-thirds voter approval before the county could build or expand large jails near homes. It also would apply to airports and hazardous-waste landfills.

Measure backers were stunned by Carona’s comments. The sheriff had raised concerns about the initiative’s consequences earlier this year. But he has been working with South County officials since then to find alternatives for a planned expansion of the James A. Musick branch jail in Lake Forest, which would be subject to the initiative.

Jeffrey Metzger, a Laguna Hills attorney leading the ballot effort, said Carona apparently wants no limits on the location or size of a new jail, and that is a reason for voters to be concerned.

“We think he should have limitations,” Metzger said. “If he opposes [the initiative], we’ll point that out as a reason why it should pass, because there is a threat [a jail] could be built next to someone’s home.”

Carona’s comments were in a county report on possible consequences of the measure, which was written by a coalition of South County cities as a way to stop the plans for building a new commercial airport at the closed El Toro Marine base. Jails and hazardous-waste landfills were added as projects that residents should be able to halt at the ballot box.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected Tuesday to place the measure on the March ballot. Organizers gathered more than enough signatures to qualify it for a vote.

Orange Coiunty’s jail system has been under a federal court order since 1985 reduce overcrowding. More than 500,000 convicts have been released early since 1986 because of a requirement that a jail bed must be available for each new inmate, Carona said.

Letting criminals out before they have served their full sentences has had serious consequences in Orange County, he said: In the past six years, 4,000 early-release criminals were rearrested for committing crimes during the time when they otherwise would have been behind bars.

Passage of the measure would bring other consequences, the sheriff said. The county could lose tens of millions of dollars in state funds to help pay for new jails because of an inability to meet deadlines for project approvals. For example, the county got $40 million from the state for the expansion of the Theo Lacy jail in Orange, he said.