May 15, 2008

County loses out on jail funds

San Mateo officials look to bonds to ease crowding

By Shaun Bishop / Daily News Staff Writer

With San Mateo County's hopes of getting state money for a new jail dashed, the county likely will rely on bonds to pay for a facility that would ease severe overcrowding, officials said Wednesday.

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced last week that San Mateo County was not one of 12 counties picked to get an initial round of funding from Assembly Bill 900, the $7.7 billion jail construction legislation signed last year by the governor.

Local officials were hardly surprised, since first preference went to counties that agreed to give the state land for a "secure re-entry facility" - a prison to hold up to 500 state inmates just before they are released to their home counties.

San Mateo County opted not to offer scarce land for such a prison within 90 days, as the state required. San Mateo, the only Bay Area county to apply, also had feared the state might force it to pay for the prison's operations at some point.

"We really didn't think we were going to be competitive going in," County Manager John Maltbie said.

The county Board of Supervisors decided in March to apply anyway in a long-shot attempt to fund a proposed 648-bed, five-story jail to be built where the women's jail now sits in Redwood City.

In total, the state doled out $750 million to half of the 24 counties that applied, all of which offered to build re-entry facilities. The awards, which will be finalized in September, ranged from $10 million to $100 million and will help provide 8,286 jail beds.

There is still $450 million available from the legislation, but lawmakers have "made it very clear that their legislative intent of awarding these funds is for those counties that site re-entry facilities," said Seth Unger, spokesman for the state corrections department.

The county scored well in the number of beds its jail would create and its need for a new jail. But it was docked for declining to identify services that would be available for state parolees, such as drug and alcohol counseling or job training.

Assistant Sheriff Greg Trindle said the county wants to focus on rehabilitating its own inmates. He said trying to deal with a state re-entry facility would add to that burden.

"We're just trying to get our own heads above water as far as our local jail population is concerned," Trindle said.

Overcrowding in county jails is rampant, with an average daily population in the men's jail - designed for 688 inmates - exceeding 1,000. The 84-person-capacity women's jail typically holds 140 or more.

Without state money, the county now will probably have to fully finance the new jail with bonds, Maltbie said. The jail is estimated to cost about $140 million and to open in 2011. Maltbie said construction planning could begin this summer, though details about the exact site and the design are yet to be hammered out.

In the meantime, Sheriff Greg Munk plans to do other things to reduce overcrowding. He intends to ask the supervisors next week for $537,000 to fix up a mothballed medium-security facility in La Honda that could be used if the overcrowding gets any worse or to house prisoners while a new jail is being built.

The sheriff's department also hopes to open an old booking facility in South San Francisco as a testing ground for women's programs expected to become available at the new jail, Trindle said. The county hopes offering inmates more services will help people transition back into society and stay out of jail.



E-mail Shaun Bishop at sbishop@dailynewsgroup.com.