Go back to News pageSAN FRANCISICO -- San Francisco voters may want to fight crime, but they aren't interested in raising property taxes to do it.
Proposition A, which would have provided $196 million in jail bonds, went down in defeat last Tuesday - leaving the city with a court order and the need to speed the early release of inmates to avoid potentially huge fines for jail overcrowding.
Mort Cohen, a Golden Gate Law School professor who has filed class-action lawsuits on behalf of the inmates, described the voters' prevailing attitude as a case of "we want our streets safe, but we won't pay for it."
The jail bonds would have meant a tax increase for San Francisco homeowners. For example, annual taxes for the owner of a $250,000 home could have increased by as much as $77.
Prop. A would have paid for replacement of the city's dilapidated jail in San Bruno. Once the new facility opened, city officials had hoped the 1,500 beds would have dramatically eased jail overcrowding.
Those hopes were dashed when the ballot measure captured about 54 percent approval from voters - far short of the two-thirds majority needed to approve general obligation bonds. A similar bond measure failed in 1991.
"What we'll have is a situation where only violent felons are locked up," said Jim Harrigan, lawyer for the Sheriff's Department.
Now city officials are scrambling to reduce the prisoner population before a federal judge begins to levy millions of dollars in fines on Dec. 10.
Only two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge William Orrick of San Francisco angrily declared he will fine the city $2,500 a day for each inmate who exceeds the cap of 426 inmates at the main jail at the Hall of Justice.
The sanctions could subject the city to fines of as much as $4 million a month during the winter months, the busiest time of the year.
Since 1990, the city has paid nearly $2.6 million in jail fines. San Francisco also has paid $14.6 million during the past two years to rent about 250 jail beds in Alameda County. But that contract expires Dec. 1 and the city is being asked to find jail space elsewhere. Meanwhile, the city plans to open the first half of a new detention facility next to the Hall of Justice, but it has yet to gather funds to staff the other half.
City officials also want to give the sheriff greater discretion to grant early paroles, but he will need the cooperation of judges, prosecutors and police. Many inmates are already being released from San Francisco jails after serving 70 percent of their sentences.
Built more than 60 years ago, the San Bruno jail is the target of a federal lawsuit by inmates, including mentally ill prisoners and those who have HIV. They say that overcrowded, unsafe conditions in the jail violate their constitutional rights.
Mayor Jordan and a coalition of community leaders rallied behind this year's jail bond measure. But it was opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union because of the city's plan to "double-cell" inmates at the new facility.
Copyright 1994 the Free Press
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