Public Safety Funds Fight Settled

Ventura County leaders Wednesday ended a costly and bitter legal battle over public safety funding, approving a settlement that ties law enforcement budgets to the county’s ability to pay while still giving those departments funding priority.

The fight between the Board of Supervisors and the county’s top lawmen had flared off and on for more than a decade. The new pact appears to settle their disagreements and cancels a summer trial that was expected to cost millions in taxpayer dollars.

“What a great day it is,” board Chairwoman Kathy Long said. “It has been years of work coming to this agreement. But we now have a blueprint that will allow us to live within our means for many years to come.”

After voting 4 to 0 to approve the settlement, the supervisors signed the document with a ceremonial flourish. Supervisor John Flynn was in Washington, D.C., but made clear his support of the agreement, officials said.

Sheriff Bob Brooks and Dist. Atty. Greg Totten, who sued the board over the funding issue in 2003, were equally jubilant.

“We are all winners,” Totten said. “This is an agreement that is going to stand the test of time.”

Under its terms, budget increases for four departments -- sheriff, district attorney, probation and public defender -- will be determined by a complex formula that takes into account both a standard inflation adjustment and historical revenue growth within the general fund.

The change will result in public safety agencies receiving a bigger slice of the general fund, at least for the immediate future, than they have in recent years.

For the budget year that begins July 1, the four agencies are to receive an estimated 4.8% increase in general fund dollars, compared with the 3.3% increase they would have received under the previous formula.

The financial boost is possible because the county is projecting an overall revenue increase of 6.5%, or $14.7 million, in its $227.4-million general fund budget. That will translate into an additional $6.2 million in general fund dollars for the four departments, said Tom Womack, deputy county executive officer.

Public safety groups will also get $16 million over the next three years to offset the higher cost of providing pensions, officials said.

Sheriff Brooks said the additional funding would allow him to reopen the shuttered East County Jail in Thousand Oaks. Brooks closed the jail in October 2003, saying that with reduced funding he could no longer afford to keep it open.

The city of Thousand Oaks and a citizens group, which had joined the litigation against the Board of Supervisors, agreed to drop their legal claims as a result of the settlement.

In return for added dollars, Brooks and Totten agreed to provisions that could reduce their budgets when the county is going through lean financial times.

They also agreed that the board could seek a legal ruling on the constitutionality of an ordinance adopted in 1995 that sparked the funding fight. The ordinance directed all money from Proposition 172’s half-cent sales tax increase to the public safety agencies. That tax generates about $55 million a year.

On top of that, public safety departments were allowed to dip into the county’s general fund to cover any increases in spending from one year to the next.

New hiring and increases in salaries and benefits drove spending increases of 7% to 10% for several years. But in 2001, the current board voted to hold inflationary growth to the Consumer Price Index, about 3%.

Brooks and Totten sued the county, alleging the change was illegal.