Board approves county budget

Los Angeles County supervisors on Monday unanimously approved a record $21.8-billion spending plan for the coming fiscal year, including a last-minute increase for the Sheriff’s Department to help reduce the early release of jail inmates.

Supervisors earmarked an extra $7.2 million to reopen an additional 252 jail beds at the Pitchess Detention Center’s South Facility in Castaic. The department had asked for $15.7 million to reopen a total of 708 jail beds.

Over three years, the board has allocated nearly $70 million to fund more than 700 new staffing positions and reopened large portions of the jails that the department had closed since 2002, during lean economic times.

Yet the department, which has been under pressure from a federal court to further reduce overcrowding, continues to release sentenced inmates early.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky asked county budget officials to examine whether the funds have been spent on reopening jail beds. Supervisor Gloria Molina expressed skepticism about the spending.

“There is suspicion on this side of the table that this money will get allocated, and you all are not going to use it” for jail beds, she said.

Assistant Sheriff Paul K. Tanaka assured the board that the money would be used as intended.

The increase in funding was the most significant amendment to the proposed budget that county officials unveiled in April.

The new spending plan, which takes effect July 1, includes more money for gang suppression, sheriff’s patrols and security at juvenile camps.

As part of Monday’s budget presentation, health officials offered some relatively good news to supervisors on the deficit that was forecast for the county Department of Health Services.

Changes in federal reimbursement for senior healthcare and savings from downsizing Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital helped turn a modest projected shortfall into a surplus of about $120 million, the officials said.

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susannah.rosenblatt @latimes.com