By Marie C. Baca
SAN JOSE-- When the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved a new $4 billion budget in June, Acting County Executive Gary Graves said in a press release that public services were stripped "down to the bare bones." To address a $273 million deficit, the Supervisors cut $125 million worth of programs and eliminated 211 jobs. Although much attention was given to drastic cuts endured by the Public Health Department and the Mental Health Department, the county’s public safety and justice programs did not escape unscathed.
Obscured by a 1 percent increase in appropriations to $619 million, the fiscal year 2010 public safety and justice budget contains significant reductions in services. Among the most notable of these cuts: the elimination of a perimeter patrol around Elmwood Correctional Facility and the end of legal representation for children in dependency cases.
Budget Operations Manager Mary Stephens said that the reductions were essential considering that the County faced a $273 million deficit, but budget analysts did their best to ensure that public safety and justice departments saw fewer cuts than other departments.
“We still have to fulfill our state and federal mandates [for public safety and justice],” said Stephens. “We really are ‘down to the bare bones’ in this area.”
To save $413,000, the County did away with two full-time deputy sheriff positions, leaving no patrol unit for the perimeter of the Elmwood Correctional Facility, which houses some 4,000 inmates. The deputies in the surrounding areas now take turns covering the position, making it more difficult to respond to other calls efficiently.
The change is small in comparison to the cuts to the juvenile dependency representation program, which provides legal representation for children in cases where they are removed from their home. Although technically the fiscal responsibility of the State, Santa Clara County historically provided a $1 million subsidy for the program and operated it out of the District Attorney’s office.
When the subsidy was removed, the Court chose an outside organization to handle the program, eliminating 24 positions from the District Attorney’s office and saving over $1.8 million.
Not every budget change created a reduction in service. Some of the areas that received additional appropriations involved safety and legal issues that could no longer be overlooked. The Sheriff’s Department won $91,500 to update an IT system that was so slow that “deputies have had to resort to copying digital evidence and collision report files to CD and transporting the CD’s to headquarters,” according to the budget report.
Bruce Overoye, director of information systems for the Office of the Sheriff, said that the system is currently being implemented and will be fully operational in four months.
“It’s going to dramatically increase the speed of our information transfer,” said Overoye. “That means much better support for officers in the field.”
Other services that saw an increase in appropriations included administration for the public defender, the public record expungement program, the crime laboratory, and the public defender’s juvenile delinquency cases.
But such windfalls may not be around for long. Stephens said that with the County facing another hundreds-of-millions dollar deficit in the coming year, additional service reductions might occur across the board—but she’s not sure how.
“There’s just not much there to cut,” said Stephens.
Image courtesy Richard Masoner via Flickr.
