Judge Finds Budget Law Is Valid

A Ventura County law that protects funding for the sheriff, district attorney and two other public safety agencies is legally valid and must be upheld, a Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

Judge Henry J. Walsh’s finding that Ordinance 4088 does not illegally strip budgetary power from the Board of Supervisors marks the first judicial ruling on a Ventura County law that has been debated for nearly a decade.

Walsh said that if the board believed the 1995 ordinance was creating a hardship for county government, it could ask the electorate to repeal or modify it.

“These ripple effects ... are beyond the scope of this case,” Walsh said. “For all those unwanted effects, Ordinance 4088 remains, however, a valid exercise of the initiative process.”

Walsh’s ruling was a big victory for Sheriff Bob Brooks and Dist. Atty. Greg Totten, who sued the county Board of Supervisors last year over changes made to the funding law in 2001.

“It’s the right ruling on the law and the position the sheriff and I have taken from Day 1,” Totten said. “A respected jurist in our community, in a very strongly worded decision, unequivocally upheld the power of the local electorate to tell the board how they want their money spent.”

Walsh’s ruling arose from a motion filed by the supervisors requesting a speedy ruling on the constitutionality of the public safety ordinance, but does not end the litigation. It simply settles, for now, questions about the constitutionality of the ordinance.

Supervisors have other options, Totten said. They can attempt to appeal Walsh’s decision within 20 days, but it will be up to the appellate court to decide whether it will review the ruling, he said.

Board members also could sit down with law enforcement leaders and work out a settlement, the district attorney said. Although County Executive Officer Johnny Johnston has met with Brooks and Totten to discuss potential settlements, those meetings have so far produced no results.

Totten said that in his mind any revised ordinance or amendments would probably have to go to the electorate for approval. “A settlement would likely involve a vote by the public,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to.”

At issue is a 1995 law that gives all of the proceeds from Proposition 172’s half-cent sales tax increase to four agencies: the Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office, public defender’s office and probation department. Supervisors agreed to enact it without a vote after public safety supporters gathered enough signatures to put in on a ballot.

A year later the ordinance was amended to guarantee that the public safety agencies would additionally receive general fund dollars to cover inflationary costs, no matter how high. Supervisors voted to rein in that provision in 2001, capping the inflation adjustment at the consumer price index.