Countywide : Supervisors Reconsider Jail Work ‘Emergency’
- Share via
County officials Tuesday decided against declaring a state of emergency to deal with the overcrowded conditions in the Orange County Jail after learning that such action might be illegal.
A declaration of emergency was considered because, in some instances, it would have allowed work on the expansion of two minimum-security facilities to be accelerated without competitive bidding.
But County Counsel Adrian Kuyper’s staff advised Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley that such emergency procedures can be applied only to repairs or replacements of facilities, not to new construction or expansion.
The crowded conditions at the main jail, in downtown Santa Ana, became a crisis situation for county supervisors last week, when U.S. District Judge William P. Gray, in Los Angeles, found Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates and the supervisors in criminal contempt for not following a 1978 order to improve accommodations at the jail.
The judge gave the county 60 days in which to relieve the overcrowding before he begins levying a fine of $10 a day, after the first night of incarceration, for each prisoner denied a bed in the jail. The judge has already fined the county $50,000.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
