Revamp of Lockups Is a Budget Priority

Los Angeles County’s violent jails are set to receive yet more cash next year, with county leaders proposing to complete a promised 25% expansion of the nation’s largest jail system.

The added $128 million -- outlined in a proposed 2006-07 budget released Monday -- would mark the second major funding boost in a row for Sheriff Lee Baca, who is struggling to contain deadly race rioting and overcrowding in the jails.

But the $19.4-billion spending plan, which is slightly smaller than last year’s, does not address several long-term problems even as the county’s coffers fill with taxes generated by the skyrocketing housing market.

And there are already signs of a brewing debate over where to find more money for public safety.

County leaders have not figured out where they will get hundreds of millions of dollars that the sheriff says he needs for a systemwide modernization that would control the violence and end the controversial practice of releasing inmates early to ease overcrowding.

The five-member Board of Supervisors is also facing a possible $1-billion shortfall in 2009-10, driven by rising healthcare costs that are threatening the county’s health system.

The budget submitted to supervisors by Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen does not suggest any solution for that problem, but Janssen is proposing to spend more local tax money to prop up the $3.7-billion health system for another year.

As the county’s senior appointed official, Janssen assembles the budget, which in turn must be approved by the elected Board of Supervisors by July 1.

Janssen’s budget includes a smattering of extra money for other health, welfare and public safety services, though overall spending is declining as the county cuts what it sets aside for future years, Janssen said.

The housing market is allowing the normally fiscally conservative county to expand services even in the face of looming federal cuts and restore some services curtailed during the state’s budget crisis.

One of those expansions will allow the sheriff to complete a long-envisioned reshuffling of the troubled jail system, which on any given day locks up nearly 20,000 inmates.

With new money, Baca should be able to keep female inmates in a reopened lockup in Lynwood instead of at the high-security Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles, where they had been housed until recently.

That in turn should allow the sheriff to move high-risk male inmates from the less-secure Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic to the Twin Towers.

A concentration of violent offenders in the Pitchess facility, which houses inmates in a dormitory setting rather than in cells, has been blamed for recent rioting that claimed the life of one inmate.

Additional funding for Baca’s roughly $2-billion department should also allow other security upgrades in the jail system, as well as boost medical services for inmates, according to Janssen’s budget.

The proposed funding boost for the Sheriff’s Department comes on top of a $150-million hike that Baca received the year before. But despite that additional money, the sheriff has still not stopped releasing inmates before they have served their full sentences, a move that he has said was necessary to control overcrowding.

Since 2002, Baca has granted early release to more than 200,000 inmates, most of whom have served only 10% of their sentences.

Baca also is laboring to stop the tide of unhappy deputies who are leaving his department.

Baca said recently that he hopes the staffing problem will ease. “We treat our people well. We give them a lot of nurturing.... It’s a good place to work,” he said.

The sheriff, who asked for $2.5 billion this year, also has said he wants to reopen the Sybil Brand women’s jail in Monterey Park, which was closed in 1998.

And many feel that the decrepit Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles is in need of a major modernization.

“The jail situation is very tough,” Janssen said, noting the county’s aging facilities and the need for ongoing money to hire adequate staff to watch the inmates.

Janssen said Monday that Baca’s plan for Sybil Brand alone could cost about $165 million, not including the more than $60 million it would cost to staff the facility every year.

Earlier this year, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky proposed putting a bond issue before voters to help cover the costs of part of the upgrade. But he said he and the other supervisors, who have long had a testy relationship with Baca, want more information from the sheriff before they proceed.

“We need to know what his plan is,” Yaroslavsky said.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, meanwhile, criticized Janssen for not allocating money to begin work on the Sybil Brand plan right away and to expand law enforcement efforts in areas patrolled by the sheriff.

“We must address the gang issue by meeting the needs of the sheriff, the district attorney and probation, instead of raising taxes or issuing more bonds,” Antonovich said in a statement.

Supervisor Don Knabe also said Monday that he plans to look for additional ways to pay for sheriff’s patrols and the Sybil Brand plan.

Antonovich, in particular, has long argued that the county should spend more on public safety, even if it means cutting back on social services and the public health system, which he says should be funded by the state and federal governments. About half of the county’s budget comes from state and federal sources.

But Janssen and other supervisors have historically supplemented state and federal money with local tax dollars to provide added services to the county’s poorest residents.

Janssen’s proposed budget would continue that next year.

It offers additional spending for the Department of Children and Family Services, which is working to overhaul how it decides where to place abused and neglected children.

It increases the county’s contribution to the Department of Health Services to hire more nurses for the network of hospitals and clinics that last year served about 700,000 mostly uninsured patients.

And it would provide $100 million to expand services to the county’s homeless, a plan approved earlier this year over Antonovich’s objections.

The plan also boosts spending for the Probation Department to deal with ongoing problems at the county’s system of halls and camps for juvenile offenders.

Times staff writer Stuart Pfeifer contributed to this report.

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L.A. County budget at a glance

Highlights of the 2006-07 proposed spending plan, which the Board of Supervisors must revise or accept by July 1:

Total spending: $19.4 billion, about 2.5% less than last year.

* Employees: Approximately 98,622, about 3% more than last year.

* Sheriff: Gets 953 more jail beds, 338 more positions and money for inmate medical services, a new crime lab and a radio system linking deputies with county fire and police.

* Probation: Adds 270 positions to supervise juvenile offenders.

* Homeless: New initiative provides more than $100 million in services and housing aide.

* Health services: Adds about 829 positions -- more than half of them nurses -- at hospitals and health facilities, plus $94 million in new funding.

* Children/family services: Adds 466 positions to aid foster children and their caregivers.

Source: Los Angeles County chief administrative officer

Los Angeles Times