Articles & News

October 1, 2008

County may still receive jail funds

By Raheem Hosseini (editor@ledger-dispatch.com)

Sometimes being first doesn't always mean coming out ahead.

At least, that's what Amador County law enforcement officials discovered Thursday in Berkeley, where a state Corrections Standards Authority meeting left the county's prospects for millions toward a new jail virtually unchanged from where they were four months earlier.

The CSA moved forward with the process for distributing $750 million in state funds to relieve overcrowding in prisons and jails, and to advance sites for the construction of reentry facilities for 16,000 California inmates. One of the linchpins in Assembly Bill 900, the Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Services Act signed by the governor last May, reentry facilities are among the reforms aimed at reducing the state's 70 percent recidivism rate by offering social and health care services to inmates nearing parole.

In a Sept. 18 release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the CSA board said its decisions on how to distribute the funds were based primarily on whether counties had lined up viable reentry site plans.

Yet Amador County, which was among the first communities to lock down plans for such a site, still came up just short. While Amador moved up one spot in the rankings for small counties since the May CSA meeting in Sacramento - thanks to the removal of Kings County, which was unable to identify a reentry site before the state's Sept. 13 deadline - that wasn't high enough to earn a conditional award.

Since the middle of last year, county supervisors and sheriff's officials had been hearing from the state that support for a regional reentry facility would put them at the top of the list when state bond funds were awarded from AB900. Rather than ignite the controversy that has swept Yolo and Shasta counties regarding the possible presence of these "mini-prisons," Amador and Calaveras were able to hitch their hopes to a proposed reentry facility in San Joaquin County, which offered up the abandoned Northern California Women's Facility in Stockton as an option to serve all three. Under the criteria the state established for awarding bond money, Amador was ranked ninth overall among all counties and higher than some smaller counties that ended up with conditional awards.

At the Sept. 18 meeting, Sheriff Martin Ryan made his case that Amador had met all its deadlines and requirements and had identified a viable jail site, while other counties ranked ahead of Amador had not. "We've done everything you asked in the timeframe you asked," Ryan said he told board members.

Both San Joaquin and Calaveras, which saw its full $26 million request authorized when Kings County's plan fell through, received conditional awards. Yolo County, ranked first in the small county category, was granted a 90-day extension to see if a proposed site recently approved by Yolo supervisors would survive heated public controversy. Tuolumne County, whose reentry plans are also uncertain, and Shasta County, which has officially opposed participating in the reentry program, were both granted 90-day extensions as well.

Staff from CDCR's Division of Facilities Planning, Construction and Management provided testimony on the viability of the reentry facility sites presented by the first 12 counties that received tentative conditional awards in May. The CSA board then "took every county on a case by case basis," said CDCR spokesman Seth Unger. That's why Tuolumne's hopes survived and why Shasta was granted an extension.

"There were some counties that had no problems with sites. There were other counties that either didn't identify a site or had problems with the sites they did identify," Unger said. That included some large counties that got taken out of consideration, like Los Angeles, Orange and Monterey. A total of $280 million was withdrawn from those previously ranked counties and redistributed.

That shake-up means there's still hope for those counties left out of the initial rounds. Unger hinted at a number of scenarios under which unranked counties could end up with state bond money. The board's message on Thursday, he said, was for those counties to lock down siting agreements for reentry facilities in the advent that other counties' plans fall through.

That was the official CSA line as well.

"There are some counties who have worked diligently with the state to identify reentry sites but were unable to do so," said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate, chair of the CSA board. "It is my hope that these counties will continue to work with the state so that they may be eligible to receive jail funds and reentry facilities in the second phase of AB 900 funding."

While there is no timeline for when Phase 2 funds will be awarded, the likelihood that other counties could see their Phase 1 hopes derailed almost seems likely. Three of the four large and mid-sized counties granted tentative awards on Thursday currently are without plans for reentry facilities. That's prompted Ryan to speak in terms of "when" Amador received funding, rather than "if."

"Quite honestly, I feel quite good about it and, after 90 days, I'm confident we'll be funded," the sheriff said Friday.

If Tuolumne's plan falls through, that's nearly $14 million that could skip over Shasta to Amador. And if there's money left over from the large county pool, Amador could see its full $22.7 million request granted. If that happens, the county would have to match 25 percent of that. Despite a tight budget year, Ryan is hopeful the money will be found. Jail construction could still be a year or more away, and there may be other sources for the remaining funds, including development agreements. Ryan said the board of supervisors' willingness to look elsewhere for the money to purchase a new jail site shows its commitment to replacing the crowded, 76-bed Jackson structure.