Sacramento -- California's prison chief said Tuesday that the state can work toward meeting a court order to slash its prison population by 33,000 inmates only if the Legislature approves Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to extend and increase taxes.
Matt Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, called Brown's plan to send thousands of inmates to local jails instead of state prisons the cornerstone of the state's solution to meeting the court order. Brown's plan, known as realignment, was approved by lawmakers in March but has not been funded. Funding is needed so that the state can compensate counties for the extra costs of housing inmates in jails.
Cate said the state laid out its inmate-reduction plan in a court filing Tuesday to a three-judge panel overseeing the court order. The state told the court that Brown's plan to house more inmates in county jails, as well as a number of smaller measures already begun, is how the state will attempt to meet the May 23 U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the prison population over the next two years.
Republicans have balked at both the substance of the realignment plan and the way Brown wants to pay for it, but Cate said the plan - outlined in AB109 - is the only responsible way to meet the court's requirements. The prison chief added that officials would move forward with the plan as soon as funding is approved by lawmakers, even though Brown has said he would also go to voters to ratify the taxes.
"If 109 is not funded and implemented, then we're in trouble - I just don't see any other way to get there," Cate said. "I expect voters to support it. ... If voters reject it, we are going to have to find another source of funding because it's going to be tough to back off realignment once you've started."
Budget deadline
Cate's comments came eight days before the lawmakers' deadline to pass a budget, and as Brown scrambles to find the four Republican votes he needs to pass a spending plan that includes taxes.It's not clear whether the comments changed anyone's mind. Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County), dismissed Cate's comments as an "attempt to put undue and unjustified pressure on the Legislature to go along with his dangerous realignment plan," adding that he believes the court will view the plan as inadequate.
Other GOP lawmakers, who have slammed the court order as a major threat to public safety, nevertheless said there are "safer options" available to state leaders as they attempt to comply. Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway of Tulare said the state could construct new prisons through a bond measure approved by the Legislature in 2007, and send more prisoners to out-of-state private facilities in the meantime.
"The Brown administration continues to use scare tactics to push the governor's dangerous realignment proposal," she said in a statement.
Earlier, Cate had said the state plans to meet the order in part by using the 2007 bond money to build some new prisons and medical facilities, and by continuing to house approximately 10,000 inmates in private prisons outside California. But he added that he would like the private prison program to remain in place only for the "short term." And as The Chronicle reported earlier this year, the state has not yet completed the construction of a single prison authorized under the 2007 bond initiative, though several are being built.
Supreme Court order
The U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld a lower court's 2009 ruling that California must reduce the population of its jammed prisons to 110,000 inmates by 2013 The court found that crowding in a prison system that has held nearly twice its designed capacity for more than a decade has resulted in "grossly inadequate" medical and mental health care and has endangered guards as well as inmates.Under the order, the state has until Nov. 28 to meet an initial goal of reducing the prison population - currently at 143,500 inmates - by 10,500. Cate called that a "big goal" and said the state may need some "flexibility" from the court on that first deadline. But he added that it would be "irresponsible" to ask for an extension without attempting to implement realignment.
Rebekah Evenson of the Prison Law Office, a lawyer for inmates who initiated the suit that led to the May Supreme Court decision, said Tuesday's court filing "shows that the state has the ability to meet the court's order in a way that both saves the state money and reduces crime."
Compliance, she said, "is a matter of political will."
Evenson wouldn't say what the court should do if Brown can't win enough Republican votes to fund his plan.
Realignment would require counties to keep nonviolent prisoners and parolees in jails and under local probation instead of sending them to state prisons. Under the governor's proposal, the increased costs to counties would be funded by extending and increasing a handful of taxes.
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