Critics Say Baca Holds Budget Key

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, desperately seeking cash for his pinched department, has freed more than 47,000 prisoners from jail in the last year to save money and is now promoting a countywide tax hike to raise fresh funds.

The sheriff has defended the early releases, saying he had no choice. But interviews with county officials and internal memos indicate that Baca’s budget could be balanced by tapping another source of money: 40 cities that hire the Sheriff’s Department to police their territory while paying substantially less than the full cost.

Two county supervisors, Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky, have publicly questioned the current system, saying their constituents may be unfairly subsidizing police coverage in the contract cities. Supervisor Don Knabe, whose district includes many of the contract cities, warns that charging more could prompt cities to drop the department altogether.

With the contracts set to expire in June, the Board of Supervisors recently ordered a review of the billing policies.

From Compton to Santa Clarita, so-called contract cities pay a combined $174 million per year for a complete package of police services. The contracts provide about 10% of Baca’s budget but are a bargain, some county supervisors and budget experts suspect, that may be shortchanging the county.

The sheriff charges cities for patrol deputies, their commanding officers and a limited range of support costs based on a pricing formula adopted by the supervisors in 1971 -- long before law enforcement adopted sophisticated, and expensive, practices such as DNA testing or placing portable computers in patrol cars.

The department provides a broad range of services beyond patrol -- including homicide and narcotics detectives, fingerprint identification, bomb squads and the county crime lab -- at no extra charge.

Billing for those services could potentially pull in more than $100 million per year for the cash-strapped county, according to county memos. By comparison, Baca’s decision to release inmates early, including those convicted of domestic violence or drunk driving, saves about $17 million per year.

“It is not fair to charge the cities just for the cost of the patrol cars and the officers when the costs far exceed that,” Yaroslavsky said. “Clearly, the status quo is unacceptable at a time when the sheriff has 1,000 fewer deputies on the street than he had a few years ago and when he’s releasing inmates from the jails.”

Today, the county will unveil a 2004-05 budget proposal that promises more pain for the $1.7-billion Sheriff’s Department. As employee benefits, workers’ compensation and other expenses rise, Baca could be required to absorb $34.8 million in additional costs in the coming fiscal year. This comes on top of the $166.8 million in additional costs Baca said his department has had to cover over the last two years.

The budget pressures, which could worsen when the state finalizes its budget later this year, have resurrected a debate over law enforcement funding that has been buried for three decades. At its heart lies a perennial question: Is everyone paying their fair share for local services?

Molina has asked the Sheriff’s Department and other staff to investigate whether the county could legally recover more costs from cities.

“There’s a gazillion dollars that we could be charging,” said Brian Center, Molina’s justice deputy. “It’s a policy decision, not a legal decision.”

Baca said he was open to studying the issue, but cautioned against “using tough budget times as money-grabbing opportunities.”

“The great budget bandit is the state,” he said, “and we’ve got to unite with the cities to fight the state.”

The Los Angeles County Code requires that contracts “shall provide full reimbursement to the county of the actual costs of providing such services.”

But any move to raise prices is likely to incite an outcry from the contract cities.

“The state gets into problems, so they go after the counties. Now the county wants to go after the cities,” said Lancaster City Manager Jim Gilley. “Who do we get to go after?”

In 1973, contract cities persuaded lawmakers in Sacramento to limit overhead costs that the county could charge them. The 1973 law bars counties from billing cities for “services made available to all portions of the county.”

The vague statutory language raises the question of which services should be considered “countywide” -- and therefore, provided freely to cities. Changing the county’s policy also would have an impact on cities that have their own police departments but sometimes tap county services free of charge, such as Glendale, Long Beach and San Fernando.

“There is no ‘bright line’ resolving with clarity in all cases the issue of countywide versus chargeable services,” one county attorney, Raymond G. Fortner Jr., wrote in a 1997 memo to Yaroslavsky.

Sam Olivito, executive director of the California Contract Cities Assn., said his group has studied the sheriff’s rate structure many times over the years and believes it is fair.

“If the services become too costly, then the cities will start to look elsewhere,” Olivito said. That might mean starting their own forces or contracting with another city’s police department.

In 1995, Santa Fe Springs did just that, ditching the Sheriff’s Department after 37 years in favor of a contract with the Whittier Police Department. Then-Sheriff Sherman Block lobbied furiously to keep the contract, even offering to put a cap on future cost increases.

The loss still stings. “We have to be competitive,” said Knabe, whose district cuts across the county from the San Gabriel Valley to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Marina del Rey and includes nearly half of the contract cities. “The thing we have to remember is, we’re not the only game in town anymore.”

The Sheriff’s Department has long cherished its contract cities, which expand its ranks, enhance flexibility to respond to crimes across city lines -- and offer a big political payoff. When Block faced a tough reelection campaign in 1998, he collected endorsements from more than 100 mayors and council members of the contract cities.

City officials decide how many deputies they want (or can afford) to patrol their streets, and whether they will need additional services for holiday parades or other special events. They essentially are buying units of patrol time.

West Hollywood, for example, will pay $10,653,923 this year for 8,059,080 minutes of policing. That’s roughly equivalent to 65 deputies, a sergeant and a lieutenant.

Throughout California, each county decides what its cities should pay for sheriff’s services. Sacramento County, which has little unincorporated territory, requires its contract cities to pay for all the services they get, according to a Los Angeles County audit of the sheriff’s budget in December. Orange and San Diego counties use a billing model similar to Los Angeles, but Contra Costa and San Bernardino counties charge their contract cities for more items.

In Los Angeles County, specialized law enforcement services that go beyond patrol are being provided to cities on a daily basis. During January, for example, the Sheriff’s Department investigated 25 homicides, according to patrol records. Sixteen of them occurred in contract cities such as Lancaster, Lynwood, Palmdale and Pico Rivera.

The sheriff’s crime lab technicians also run fingerprints through their database, analyze blood and urine for illegal drugs, and conduct DNA testing on crime-scene evidence at no cost.

Rather than increase costs for contract cities, Baca has proposed a half-cent increase in the local sales tax to generate an estimated $500 million a year for law enforcement, including the Los Angeles Police Department.

Otherwise, he mused, the government penchant for passing off costs could devolve even further.

“At some point, we can get to the place where we might as well have taxicab signs on the top of the radio cars that say you will get your service so long as you put your change in the machine,” Baca said. “At what point does government want to be irrelevant and absurd?”