California’s budget crisis has impacted every level of government: state, county, and city. Painful cuts have been and will continue to be made in all areas. Inevitably up and down the state, counties and local governments are looking at another year of reduced budgets and additional cuts.

Unfortunately, the governor cites the budget crisis as the need to make tough choices. Communities need to know that the effect of this proposal is to unwisely dump state prison inmates into county jails that are not able to safely accommodate the increased population. In addition, AB 900, which was supposed to increase capacity and reentry planning for inmates’ return to the community, is bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and cumbersome processes, and has not yet resulted in a single new county jail bed or reentry facility being opened. The governor’s budget proposal dumps inmates from overcrowded prisons into overcrowded jails with no solution contemplated.

On Jan. 25, 2010, SBX3 18 takes effect. This measure increases sentencing credits for jail inmates, creates “summary parole” (unsupervised parole), and will require what would have previously been parole violators to now face new prosecution and increased time in county jail rather than return to state prison custody (without benefit of daily jail rate paid to counties to hold parole violators). Taken together, these changes and proposals will put further strain on county jails and on local public safety in general.

In February of 2009, local public safety programs switched to be funded by a modest increase in the Vehicle License Fee (VLF). VLF was projected to replace General Fund support for COPS on the street; jails; district attorneys for prosecutions; juvenile justice programs; booking fees and methamphetamine interdiction programs. Since February, revenues have been well under projections. Even after years of cuts to these programs, VLF to local public safety is down as much as 27 percent per quarter from what was projected. What’s worse, the VLF authorization for local public safety is set to expire in June 2011.

The current year reduction in VLF revenues will have a significant impact on current year budgets for both city and county government; however any concerns over current year revenue reductions pale in comparison to the prospect of what will occur if state legislators fail to approve an extension for the VLF public safety funding. Should law makers fail to extend public safety funding through VLF, the result will be immediate and devastating for local public safety agencies. The loss of these revenues at the local level would equate to a loss of $568,000 for Mariposa County which would potentially mean the loss of eight positions from within the Sheriff’s Office and Probation Department.

Police, sheriffs, district attorneys and probation departments are being asked to implement sweeping new policy changes against the backdrop of declining and expiring revenue sources like VLF. Dumping state prison inmates into this mix exacerbates an already unstable situation for local public safety agencies and creates increased concern about public safety in our communities.

California State Sheriffs’ Association has historically worked in a cooperative and collegial manner with the governor and legislature and we expect to continue that stance this year. However, we are increasingly concerned about proposals related to parole, county jails and increased local responsibility at a time when we are struggling to fund and manage our current responsibilities and inmate populations. We urge very careful scrutiny of these proposals and that you weigh fiscal benefit against public safety impact before making further changes this year.