Sheriff, D.A. Pull Off Bloodless Budget Coup : Government: The lawmen have rewritten the political rules. Supervisors can no longer touch their funding.

Sheriff Larry Carpenter gets mobbed these days by colleagues across the state. So does Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

The word is out. These two lawmen have pulled off a bloodless political coup in Ventura County, combining their power to become a virtually untouchable force in county government.

Although careful not to gloat, Carpenter and Bradbury acknowledge their good political fortune to other law enforcement leaders eager to learn exactly how they did it:

In the span of a year, Ventura County has gone further than any other county in California to shield public safety agencies from the budget ax.

With petitions signed by 47,000 voters, the sheriff and district attorney have rewritten the political rules at the expense of the county Board of Supervisors, which can no longer touch their budgets--no matter what happens to other public services.

In future years, their budgets will grow with automatic increases to keep pace with inflation. And they will have exclusive rights, with three other public safety agencies, to tens of millions of dollars a year from a special half-cent sales tax.

The final kicker: None of this can change without approval of the county’s voters.

In a county that takes pride in its low crime rate, this budget revolution has shifted more power to Carpenter and Bradbury from a Board of Supervisors that--some say--quietly surrendered without so much as a struggle.

And that power can be easily measured:

In the last four years, the combined budgets for the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office have grown by $35 million, while most other county departments saw no gains or actually suffered reductions.

Even during this year’s budget crisis, Carpenter and Bradbury walked away with an additional $5.7 million. That compares to cuts of $2 million for mental health, $1.6 million for the county hospital and $1 million for social services.

“They are more powerful than ever,” said former Supervisor Madge Schaefer, who has closely followed their rise to glory. “It is the old adage, he who has the gold, makes the rules. They’ve got all of the gold. What does the board have left to do?”

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Ventura County has always had a law and order tilt.

Police and prosecutors would never tolerate the lawlessness of the big city to the south. A joke still makes the rounds at the courthouse: “Ventura County--Come on vacation, leave on probation.”

When Bradbury was first elected district attorney in 1978, Carpenter was just a lieutenant in charge of special investigations. His predecessor, Sheriff John Gillespie, was not a Bradbury ally in budget fights, and the district attorney was usually on his own.

He also faced a formidable ideological foe in the county’s former chief administrative officer--Richard Wittenberg. Wittenberg, once the county’s lobbyist in Sacramento, became its highest ranking non-elected official in 1979, and he was the county’s budget point man.

Wittenberg became the counterweight to Bradbury. The two men were a study in contrasts, Wittenberg the liberal who grew up poor in the big cities of New York and Los Angeles, Bradbury the conservative cowboy-lawman raised as the son of a small-town police chief in Northern California.

The two clashed repeatedly over the district attorney’s budget. And, as dollars from Sacramento grew more scarce, their relationship continued in a downward spiral, both harboring a growing mutual distrust.

It was in Sacramento that the seeds were sown for the final battle between Bradbury and Wittenberg--this time with Carpenter playing a pivotal role.

Ventura County alone has lost $64 million in the last five years, as the Legislature cut funding and shifted property tax dollars away from counties to patch holes in the state’s budget. To help recover some of those losses, Gov. Pete Wilson proposed that counties support renewal of a half-cent sales tax for public safety in 1993.

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Desperate county supervisors across California jumped at the opportunity. So did those in Ventura County, who asked Bradbury and Carpenter to lead the local campaign for Proposition 172, the statewide ballot measure.

Although the governor promised that the tax dollars would go to public safety, the initiative did not specify which agencies would get the money. And voters, egged on by anti-tax activists, expressed doubts about the true intentions of the Board of Supervisors.

Bradbury and Carpenter vividly recall the skepticism they met from voters while stumping for the tax initiative.

“Every place I spoke, the No. 1 question was, ‘How do we know the board will spend the money on public safety?” Carpenter recalled. “I said, ‘I guess we don’t really know. But I promise, I will hold their feet to the fire.’ And I kept my promise.”

The sheriff and the district attorney, both conservative Republicans, believed they had put their reputations on the line for the tax increase.

Supervisors, eager to bring in more dollars, joined in the chorus of assurances.

“We need it to pass,” Supervisor Maggie Kildee said a week before the election. “We said we would use it for law enforcement. If people have not elected board members they can trust, I don’t know what else to say.”

Proposition 172 passed easily, with 58% of the countywide vote in the November, 1993, election--a remarkable victory in a county where voters loathe hiking their own taxes.

Law enforcement officials rejoiced at their new fountain of money--which brings in an average of $28 million a year. They soon came calling on the supervisors, pressing them to formally commit the sales tax dollars to the sheriff, the district attorney, corrections services and the public defender.

*

In a proposal to the board, law enforcement officials urged the supervisors to endorse the four-way split and “uphold the solemn trust given to us by Ventura County voters who overwhelmingly approved Proposition 172.”

On March 1, 1994, county supervisors approved a resolution promising to spend the money on public safety agencies.

The county’s top leaders seemed pleased. Within months, however, that agreement began to unravel.

On reflection, former Supervisor Maria VanderKolk called it a misunderstanding. She said the supervisors made the agreement before they understood how few dollars they would have left for the county’s other 22 departments.

“They really forced our hand in establishing a deal with Proposition 172 dollars before the board was ready,” VanderKolk said, recalling the county’s financial troubles. “It looked like we were going to be OK, and we weren’t OK.”

But Carpenter--still angry--has a different description of how the understanding unraveled. “It was a double-cross,” he said.

*

Larry Wallace Carpenter loves to talk about his small-town roots. He still lives in Fillmore, not far from where he grew up on a 700-acre Palomino horse ranch. He also loves to hunt and fish.

He is less likely to mention his master’s degree in public administration, or his extensive collection of rare books or that he likes to grow roses.

“Let’s face it, Larry likes to put on that farm boy routine,” said Tom Mahon, the county’s auditor-controller. “But the fact is, he’s a shrewd politician. He’s one of the sharpest guys that we’ve got working at the county.”

Carpenter had spent nine years as second in command at the sheriff’s office when Gillespie decided to retire in 1992. Gillespie left two years before the end of his term and it was up to the supervisors to fill the job.

It was an easy choice. Carpenter, after all, was a known quantity. He had devoted his entire adult life to working his way up the ranks. As undersheriff, he had shouldered most of the load as Gillespie’s interest and attention waned.

When the supervisors appointed him to run the department without conducting a widespread talent search, they thought they had someone who would be grateful, if not beholden, to them.

They thought wrong.

Carpenter quickly turned into an aggressive advocate for his department, with budget cuts threatening all county departments. To him, law enforcement and public safety came first.

In his first budget presentation before the supervisors, the new sheriff departed from Gillespie’s low-key approach by protesting any cuts to his department.

He warned of escalating violence and the potential for crime spilling over the Los Angeles line. He even flashed a picture of Charles Manson, who had left the county shortly after being rousted by sheriff’s deputies and just before the Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles.

“Had Charles Manson not been arrested, but remained in that canyon area in our county it is not unreasonable to believe that when the concept of helter-skelter came to him, Manson might have easily slipped over the hill to Westlake, Thousand Oaks or up the Coast Highway into Camarillo,” Carpenter told the board.

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Meanwhile, with the sheriff’s blessing, citizen activists began airing dramatic radio ads that urged listeners to telephone county supervisors and object to any assault on the sheriff’s budget. As a result, Carpenter got most of what he wanted.

With his reputation set during the bruising budget round of 1993, Carpenter was summoned the following March with Bradbury to the chief administrator’s office. Wittenberg wanted a meeting so they could work out the details of the supervisors’ promise to steer all Proposition 172 dollars to public safety.

In the private meeting, Wittenberg asked them to relinquish claim to about $13 million of unspent sales tax revenue collected before the Proposition 172 vote in exchange for a promise that their budgets would not face cuts during the coming summer’s budget sessions, according to Bradbury and Carpenter.

A deal was struck, they said. A light-hearted moment passed among the three men, who had had increasingly strained relations. Bradbury and Carpenter were elated. They were being excused from the year’s painful round of budget cutting.

“We stood up and shook hands,” Bradbury recalled. “Richard said, ‘Now, I don’t want to see you at budget time.’ Larry said, ‘I’m going fishing.’ And I said, ‘I’ll be carrying his tackle box.’ ”

A few months later, Wittenberg stopped Carpenter for a word. He was agitated, Carpenter recalls. He was saying the budget shortfall was worse than expected. The county could not afford the millions needed to open the sheriff’s new jail on time.

Carpenter says he initially shrugged off the warnings, chalking it up to Wittenberg’s perennial sky-is-falling budget forecasts. But Wittenberg persisted.

When the supervisors unexpectedly cut into the sheriff’s and district attorney’s budgets in July, 1994, Carpenter grew incensed that Wittenberg and the supervisors had reneged on the earlier promises.

The cuts included $1.2 million in Proposition 172 funds diverted to the county coroner’s office and legal services for children--a move the supervisors justified by noting that Carpenter and Bradbury had offered to take control of those offices. .

“That set me off,” Carpenter said. “My word means everything. I’ve worked my whole career at that. If circumstances change, I have to honor my word and fall on my sword.”

*

Wittenberg says his recollection is foggy about the agreement struck in his office. “I don’t remember that specifically, but that’s possible,” he said. “We had some agreements and some misunderstandings.”

Wittenberg remembers seeking out Carpenter later that spring. “There were a couple of times where I thought something meant one thing and Larry thought it meant another. So I had to go back to him and say, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.’ ”

Bitter about the board’s actions, Carpenter and Bradbury formed a group of public safety officials who immediately began plotting a campaign to strip the supervisors of their power over law enforcement budgets.

By last August, the coalition of law enforcement officials and citizen boosters had drafted a countywide ballot measure that would guarantee all Proposition 172 sales tax money would go to bolster the budgets of the sheriff, the district attorney, the probation department, public defender and fire department.

And it went one step further. It forced supervisors to continue the full funding of these agencies with property taxes as it has in previous years, and to provide them with annual increases to meet inflation.

That way, the supervisors could not siphon away property tax dollars from those agencies to offset what they get from the half-cent sales tax--as has been done in other counties.

If necessary, law enforcement officials were prepared to go over the heads of the supervisors and take their case to the people. But, as it turned out, they did not need to.

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As 1995 rolled in, the brewing public safety revolt helped change the cast of political characters.

Two new supervisors, Frank Schillo and Judy Mikels, were sworn into office. The sheriff and district attorney walked precincts with Mikels during her campaign and the sheriff appeared in a television campaign ad for Schillo.

Once in office, the two supervisors pledged their loyalty to law enforcement and publicly denounced the former board for raiding public safety budgets. They joined with disaffected Supervisor John Flynn to form a new majority on the board.

And just as they were coming in, Wittenberg was preparing his exit.

After 27 years with the county government, the last 16 as chief administrator, Wittenberg made the surprise announcement a week after Schillo and Mikels were elected that he had accepted the top county job in Santa Clara County, where voters had hiked their taxes to shore up a crumbling library system.

Privately, he confessed he was disturbed by the conservative wave preparing to wash over the county government. He did not want to stand by helplessly as a new conservative majority on the board dismantled the social and health programs he supported.

“Richard Wittenberg saw the writing on the wall,” said VanderKolk, who retired as a supervisor at the same time. “He was looking around and saying this environment is becoming poisonous. It was one of the reasons he decided to go.”

On Wittenberg’s last day as chief administrator, the board’s new conservative majority stood side-by-side with the sheriff and district attorney at the kickoff of a signature drive for the local ballot measure under which the supervisors would give away control of public safety budgets.

Several hundred off-duty sheriff’s deputies soon swarmed the sidewalks in front of hardware stores, markets and malls. Each was armed with a clipboard and stack of petitions. Twenty locations on Saturdays and Sundays. Two shifts each day. Teams of two or four on each shift.

Carpenter and Bradbury joined the deputies each weekend, as did citizen activists, firefighters, deputy district attorneys and a few public defenders.

*

The voters were angry, Carpenter said. And eager to sign.

“It was a double-cross and the public knew it,” he said. “It was like selling flags on Fourth of July.”

In three months, the deputies collected 3,000 more signatures than they needed. The next stop was the Board of Supervisors, which had the option of adopting the measure instead of putting it before the voters. With little fanfare, the new majority voted the initiative into law rather than hold a costly special election.

For Schillo and Mikels, it was the chance to make good on their campaign pledges about supporting law enforcement. For Flynn, it was a victory that put him back on the winning side of a major issue, after years as the odd man out.

Board Chairwoman Maggie Kildee and Supervisor Susan Lacey cast dissenting votes, saying it was poor public policy to tie their own hands. With the 3-2 roll call, the Board of Supervisors had cut its own power.

The battle was over. Carpenter and Bradbury had won. And no longer could the supervisors meddle with the size of law enforcement budgets--no matter how much needed to be carved out of other agencies.

“We have given them another tool to become more powerful,” Kildee said. “They call the shots now. They will do what they want to do.”

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No other county has gone as far to guarantee that all Proposition 172 dollars go to expand law enforcement budgets.

“It’s unique,” said Carolyn McIntyre, legislative representative for the California State Assn. of Counties. “Everyone has been quite surprised by the Ventura action.”

While she was a supervisor, VanderKolk spent months studying Proposition 172 as the topic of her master’s thesis in public administration at Cal Lutheran University.

“In Ventura County, we did all of the wrong things in the name of public safety,” VanderKolk said. “We made one bad decision after another, and it ended up in the situation we have today.”

She said she and her fellow supervisors boxed themselves in with early commitments to spend all of the money on law enforcement--promises they grew to regret.

“Mike and Larry really held us to those statements and put a lot of pressure on the board,” VanderKolk said. “They pushed hard for this ordinance because they felt betrayed by the board.”

At the same time, she suggested that the sheriff and district attorney took advantage of the situation to grab every available cent.

In the first two years, Ventura County had funneled more Proposition 172 dollars to public safety agencies than any other county in the state. And yet, the board faced an extraordinary level of antagonism and pressure, supervisors said.

Kildee said she remains disappointed that law enforcement officials showed no flexibility when the county’s fiscal crisis worsened.

“They did not give a single inch, or a single penny,” she said.

VanderKolk considers herself a strong law enforcement supporter. But she said the new rules have eroded the supervisors’ historic control and oversight of the county’s public safety agencies--to the detriment of the county.

“A lot of budgetary control has been wrested out of the hands of the people elected to do that job,” she said. “The sheriff and D.A. were not elected to control the purse strings and at this point in time, they have that control.”

Carpenter and Bradbury said their intent was never to gain more power or more influence.

Instead, they said, they were forced to protect their budgets because county supervisors reneged on promises. Now they just want to be left alone to do their jobs fighting crime.

“For so long, it seemed I’d spend half of the day fighting crooks and half of the day fighting the folks across the way,” Bradbury said. “Now, thank the Lord, I just have to fight crooks.”

*

Carpenter said he has been wrongly accused of being on a power trip or building an empire.

“Neither is true,” he said. “For the last two years, I’ve been very political. I’ve changed my normal focus because I had to.”

Now that public safety agencies no longer have to share in belt-tightening, many county officials predict that other government programs will face deeper cuts in coming years.

“Non-public safety agencies are going to gradually dwindle away until there is nothing left,” said Steve Wood, president of the union representing 4,000 county workers.

Even if there are deep cuts, Schillo said, that is precisely what the public wants. The voters have spoken in favor of less government, except when it comes to public safety.

“When you hear these other department managers saying they want more money, they don’t get it,” Schillo said. “There is no more money. If these other agencies want more money, then they can go out and do their own initiative.”

In her thesis, VanderKolk found that the public never really understood Proposition 172 and what it meant to county government. She expects the ramifications to become clear when enough libraries close or enough residents cannot get the public services they need.

“I think the consequences will come and the public will finally see it,” VanderKolk said. “Then the pendulum will swing again. That’s politics for you.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

County Public Safety Budgets

The budgets of Ventura County’s public safety agencies have grown over the last four years. In 1993, voters approved a half-cent sales tax that has funneled millions of extra dollars into the agencies’ coffers. Not included is the Fire Department, which receives its money from the state.

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Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 Sheriff $71.6 million $80.8 million $100.0 million District Attorney $13.5 million $13.8 million $15.1 million Corrections $15.6 million $18.8 million $19.6 million Public defender $4.7 million $5.1 million $5.4 million TOTAL $105.4 million $118.5 million $140.1 million

Fiscal year 1995-96 Sheriff $105.0 million District Attorney $15.8 million Corrections $21.2 million Public defender $5.7 million TOTAL $147.7 million

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Source: Chief Administrative Office

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Changes in County Workers

Public safety departments have grown compared to other key Ventura County departments in terms of jobs lost and gained over the last four years. The biggest single increase was in the Sheriff’s Department, which hired additional employees for the new Todd Road Jail. The total increase in jobs for public safety was 283. The total increase for the other departments listed was 18.

PUBLIC SAFETY

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Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 total jobs total jobs total jobs total jobs Sheriff 962 934 1,175 1,189 District attorney 185 179 209 204 Public defender 57 57 65 65 Corrections 317 291 347 346 TOTAL 1,521 1,461 1,796 1,804

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GENERAL GOVERNMENT

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Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 total jobs total jobs total jobs total jobs Assessor 129 113 96 106 Auditor 77 73 72 72 Chief administrator 36 31 29 26 Board of Supervisors 25 25 25 25 County counsel 35 34 33 32 Personnel 65 57 48 44 TOTAL 367 333 303 305

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HEALTH

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Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 total jobs total jobs total jobs total jobs Public health 138 114 125 133 Mental health 383 390 426 440 Health care Administration 34 10 9 3 TOTAL 555 514 560 576

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PUBLIC ASSISTANCE

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Fiscal year Fiscal year Fiscal year 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 total jobs total jobs total jobs Welfare maintenance 491 532 534 Welfare administration 81 83 81 Children’s services 144 142 145 TOTAL 716 757 760

Fiscal year 1995-96 total jobs Welfare maintenance 532 Welfare administration 70 Children’s services *173 TOTAL 775

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* Includes transfers from within the department.

Source: Chief Administrative Office