Baca Offers Menu of Ideas, but Who Will Pay the Bill?

The “civic breakfast” in Beverly Hills on Wednesday was to precede a news conference urging a countywide ban on so-called “junk guns.” But handguns weren’t the only thing newly elected Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca was talking about.

There was his proposal to open four--that’s four, as in one more than three--new jail facilities, and to make one low-security facility for women only because “I trust them more.” He spoke about implementing literacy programs for jail inmates, crackdowns on gang members and how he was going to personally arrest a crook in each of the 40 cities his department serves.

“I’m not a fool. I’m going to have a real deputy with me,” he quipped to widespread laughter from the audience.

Baca has been making so many pledges to so many groups since his historic election in November that within his own department he has been nicknamed “the Disneyland dad.”

“He’s like the dad who keeps promising to take the kids to Disneyland, but he never does,” said one sheriff’s official, questioning whether the department has the resources to make good on all of Baca’s promises. “He’s an eclectic thinker, but can he deliver?”

Some county financial sources put the tab for fulfilling all Baca’s promises at about $300 million--and counting. Part of that figure comes from promises that Baca made before he took office in December, when he vowed to “raise hell” with the Board of Supervisors to secure $100 million in new funds for department improvements.

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But with the county expecting only a $30-million surplus to boost spending in every agency, most county officials expect that Baca could only get a fraction of the money he seeks. In the meantime, the sheriff’s staff is trying to figure out ways to raise other funds to implement Baca’s ideas, including cutting the department’s bureaucracy.

“I give him credit,” said sheriff’s custody chief Bob Pash, who oversees the county’s massive jail system. “He’s a forward thinker. He’s been able to energize a lot of people in the department. I like the feeling in the department right now. . . . He’s very excited. He’s got visions. He can’t get going fast enough on some of these projects he has in his mind.”

But Pash added: “Maybe his enthusiasm is causing some projects to seem to be further along than they really are. He’s going 100 miles an hour, and we are all trying to keep up with him. It’s kind of fun.”

In a variety of appearances in the county over the past two months, Baca has made promises ranging from the practical to the farfetched.

At a meeting with deputies in Calabasas in November, he said he hoped to expand staff and upgrade equipment--even if it meant taking on the Board of Supervisors to accomplish his goals.

Then, meeting with business leaders in the San Gabriel Valley a month later, Baca vowed to keep misdemeanants behind bars for their entire sentences by reopening Biscailuz Center, the Sybil Brand Institute and a small, minimum security jail at the Pitchess Detention Center. (Now, more than 3,000 sentenced prisoners are placed on house arrest and in other community-based programs to make room for hard-core offenders at the County Jail.)

And at a meeting this month in Santa Clarita, Baca said he planned to revive the agricultural operation at the old ranch facility at the Pitchess Detention Center, requiring female inmates to tend crops and livestock on the old county farm.

On Wednesday in Beverly Hills, he expanded on his plans, saying that he planned to relocate about 2,000 female inmates from the maximum security Twin Towers facility to the ranch.

“I’ve kind of given up on men in terms of rehabilitation,” Baca told about 200 people, who had gathered for a breakfast sponsored by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

Housing women at the north county jail would be more desirable, Baca said, citing recent escapes of inmates from Pitchess. “Can you imagine if 30 prostitutes escaped?” he quipped to chuckles. “We’d have to set up sirens to tell the women to come home from work and protect their husbands.”

Baca’s unisex jail proposal drew hoots and criticism from one woman in the audience, who said that while she appreciated his jokes, he should not “decide women are not dangerous--because they are.”

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Baca acknowledged in an interview that his various jail initiatives would cost more than $100 million--in addition to the $100 million that he is seeking from the board to boost the number of deputies, whose ranks were cut by 1,000 during the recession.

But he added that he believes he can force the state and federal governments to pay more for housing state prisoners and undocumented immigrants in county jails.

In his sometimes rambling, often personal speech, Baca also poked fun at his alma mater, USC--”He knows this is a UCLA crowd,” one guest guffawed appreciatively. Baca cited the importance of a Jewish teacher in his junior high school, saying that the way to fix Los Angeles schools was to hire 100,000 Jewish teachers because “they don’t put up with any nonsense.”

Baca also employed another punch line--repeatedly mentioning the $100 million funding boost he had vowed to squeeze from supervisors just a month ago. This time his delivery was self-deprecating instead of combative.

He mentioned the figure so many times that at the end of his speech Yaroslavsky walked up to the podium laughing, holding out his wallet.

“We’re not rolling in dough here,” said Yaroslavsky afterward. But he said he likes Baca’s openness and hopes that he can find enough savings in his department to implement some of his ideas.

“You’ve got to give him an opportunity here,” he said.