Sheriff Shuts Jail but Relents After Showdown

During a dramatic day of closed-door sessions and a showdown over control of the Los Angeles County jail system, Sheriff Sherman Block agreed Tuesday to reopen an Antelope Valley jail after the Board of Supervisors threatened to sue him.

The agreement came just hours after Block closed the Mira Loma Jail and shipped its inmates to other county facilities. As part of the compromise hammered out in a 90-minute closed-door meeting, Block also said he would scrap plans to close the Biscailuz Jail in East Los Angeles and part of the Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic.

In return, the board agreed to drop its lawsuit threat and to provide Block with $4 million in emergency funding that it previously balked at releasing.

“We feel and the sheriff agrees this is a proper course of action,” board Chairman Ed Edelman said. “The board is unanimous in its view that the jail facilities that were being closed . . . should stay open.”

Underlying the conflict was the separation of powers that grants the supervisors control over the department’s finances while leaving Block, an elected official, in control of the day-to-day operations.

The agreement capped a tense day at the Hall of Administration, where county officials are grappling with a projected $1.4-billion budget deficit.

In a direct challenge to Gov. Pete Wilson, supervisors also voted Tuesday to instruct the county auditor-controller to withhold property tax funds from the state if Sacramento approves a plan to transfer $2.6 billion in property tax revenue from local governments to schools.

About half of California’s 58 counties have adopted similar measures. However, the legality of the local tax revolt movement remains in question, Los Angeles County attorneys said Tuesday.

The supervisors’ debate over the county jail system and the Sheriff’s Department budget began shortly after 11 a.m., when Block officially closed the Mira Loma Jail, culminating a process that began weeks ago with planning to disperse the jail’s 900 inmates.

The last 206 of them--153 men and 53 women--boarded four sheriff’s buses about noon. The men were taken to the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles and the women to Sybil Brand Institute in East Los Angeles.

Although Block quipped after the agreement that “the buses run both ways,” the about-face does not mean the 900 prisoners can be returned immediately.

Cmdr. Robert Pash of the sheriff’s custody division, which runs the county jail system, predicted that it will take at least several days to get the jail back in operation. For example, the jail’s food stocks were removed along with the prisoners.

Most of the facility’s employees--about 125 sworn personnel and 45 civilians--were to be reassigned starting today to the Pitchess Honor Rancho, the five-jail complex in Saugus. That was canceled late Tuesday and Pash said, “We’ll have to do some phone calling.”

Some things will be harder to undo, however. Capt. Stephen Batchelor, Mira Loma’s commander, said the employees there had auctioned off their extensive collection of weightlifting equipment and liquidated their employee fund into restaurant gift certificates to prepare for the closing.

The sheriff said he was forced to shut the facility because the board had failed to guarantee full funding for his department in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. To make room for Mira Loma prisoners, the department began releasing inmates from other facilities this month.

Supervisor Gloria Molina attacked Block for “insubordination.”

“We told him not to do this, but he did it,” she said. “He let those guys go. We can’t let these (released inmates) run amok in our communities. He wants high drama. Well, I can dish it out too.”

On the recommendation of County Counsel DeWitt Clinton, the board agreed to meet in its first closed session of the day to consider legal action against Block, then decided to summon Block to the Hall of Administration to discuss the jail closures in an afternoon meeting, also behind closed doors. The second closed session lasted more than 90 minutes. Both Block and supervisors emerged in good spirits.

“We don’t want to handcuff the sheriff,” Supervisor Mike Antonovich said. “This is a step forward.”

Tuesday’s compromise came after several frantic weeks of negotiations that began in late April when Block announced that he would close the jails. Tuesday’s agreement preserves not only the jails, but also other Sheriff’s Department programs that were in danger of being cut, such as the Air Five rescue helicopter and two of the county’s five SWAT teams. It also forestalls the closure of as many as nine sheriff’s stations.

But it is a temporary measure at best.

“This is a one-month reprieve,” Block said, adding that the fate of the Sheriff’s Department budget will be determined by the outcome of state budget negotiations.

The proposed Sheriff’s Department cuts are just part of a plan by county officials that calls for a 16% across-the-board cut in all services. Also threatened are closure of public hospitals, libraries and fire stations.

Antonovich said he introduced the measure to withhold property taxes from the state because the governor’s plan to have counties balance their budgets by imposing additional local sales taxes amounts to “double taxation.”

“The governor is saying you should impose a sales tax to pay for property-related services” such as fire protection and law enforcement, Antonovich said.

County attorneys acknowledged that it remains unclear whether counties have the authority to withhold property tax revenue from the state.

The 40-year-old Mira Loma Jail, located on about 50 acres at the corner of Avenue I and 60th Street West in Lancaster, had been shut down in 1979, following passage of tax-cutting Proposition 13, and did not reopen until June, 1983.

The sheriff chose to close Mira Loma first this time because its inmate population had already been cut by more than half and because the medium security facility generally holds less serious offenders.

Mira Loma’s employees had gathered Tuesday after the inmates left to hear parting messages from Batchelor, their commander.

“I didn’t think it would come to this. I really didn’t,” Batchelor told the group.

And as it turned out, he was right.

Times staff writer John Chandler contributed to this story.