Totten Assails Safety Budget Report

Ventura County Dist. Atty. Greg Totten blasted a public safety funding analysis ordered by County Executive Officer Johnny Johnston, saying its conclusions were flawed by inaccurate information allowed by Johnston.

By rigging two studies, Johnston got the conclusion he wanted rather than an accurate picture of whether the district attorney and sheriff receive enough money to do their jobs, Totten said in a letter to the Board of Supervisors.

Studies “produced in a vacuum without any input from the subject departments fail to inspire confidence and only increase cynicism about government,” Totten wrote in the letter made public last week.

A furious Johnston dismissed Totten’s claims as “ludicrous” and “political posturing.”

The analysis, commissioned by Johnston’s office last summer, found that Ventura County has a low crime rate but pays significantly more for law enforcement than counties of similar size.

“It was intended to see if they have enough money to do their job or are people truly endangered, as the sheriff and district attorney are claiming,” Johnston said. “That’s not what the study showed and they don’t like it.”

Totten’s is the latest salvo in an intensifying standoff between law enforcement officials and county supervisors over public safety funding. Totten and Sheriff Bob Brooks have sued the county board, alleging that supervisors have illegally shortchanged their budgets since 2001.

Totten and Brooks say a 1995 county law prohibits the board from cutting their funding, but supervisors maintain that they hold ultimate budget authority over all county departments.

County lawyers are scheduled to ask a judge for a quick end to the lawsuit Monday, arguing that the law is clearly on the side of supervisors. But lawyers for Totten and Brooks are expected to vigorously fight that position at the court hearing.

Reached Friday, Totten sought to soften his comments made in the letter, saying he meant only to defend his department from unfair criticism.

“This was not by any means intended as an attack on the CEO or the board,” Totten said. “I felt duty-bound on behalf of this office to defend the men and women who work here against what I viewed as a very inaccurate report.”

But for many county leaders, the damage had already been done.

“This is part of an ongoing, well-planned PR campaign,” Supervisor Judy Mikels said. “They are trying to sway public opinion. Why not let the lawsuit take its course and we all will get an answer from the judge? I personally don’t think they are helping their cause.”

Johnston ordered the analysis after supervisors directed him to look into claims by Brooks and Totten that they didn’t have enough money to perform their duties.

Two studies were conducted, one by Sacramento-based California Institute for County Government and the other by Management Partners Inc. of Ventura County. The results were made available to Totten in November.

Backed in a separate letter by Brooks, Totten argued that the reports’ conclusions were flawed because the authors used inaccurate and outdated information.

Brooks said his own internal review showed that county patrol and jail operation costs were less in Ventura County than in San Mateo County, which was used for comparison.

Both men criticized the studies’ authors for failing to contact their offices before filing their reports.

“All of this could have been easily corrected if they had called and asked us about the numbers,” Brooks said.

The reports’ authors, reached late last week, said they stood by their methods and conclusions.

Both said that Johnston had not given them any direction on how to conduct their studies.

“We work for all the counties. We don’t have any special relationship with Ventura County,” said Matthew Newman, executive director of the California Institute for County Government and author of that group’s study. “We publish what we think is true and right and let the data speak for itself.”

All of the source information came from publicly available documents, said Andy Belknap, author of the Management Partners analysis.

He used the most recent data available in compiling his report, Belknap said.

The Board of Supervisors chairman, Steve Bennett, said he believed that the studies were valid even if they were broad comparisons of spending.

“It’s unfortunate that the district attorney of Ventura County would launch that wild of a charge,” Bennett said. “The district attorney should think carefully before he puts a charge like that in writing.”