[How I, a registered democrat, am voting for the environment in the June 6, 2006 primaries in California. I'm stuck voting at my old address at zip 90035. Here's my current voting list.]

My vote for LA County Sheriff: Lee Baca

What does the LA County Sheriff do?: The Sheriff runs the LA County Sheriff’s Department, the largest in the nation with a $2 billion budget. The department’s responsible for protecting 2.7 million people and overseeing a jail system with about 18,000 inmates. Here’s the org chart for the department.
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Lee Baca, the incumbent, is expected to win, mainly because none of his 4 competitors have ever been elected to political office.

Baca’s been criticized for the early release of nearly 16,000 inmates from jails. However, these critiques haven’t explained how Baca could’ve avoided the situation. Explains the LA Times: “Starting in 2002, the sheriff was forced to trim more than $160 million from his budget. He said he chose to close jails and ramp up the early releases instead of laying off deputies and reducing street patrols, calling his decision ‘the lesser of two evils.’”

The LA Weekly agrees that it was the budget cuts, made by the county Board of Supervisors after Sept. 11, that “provoked a terrible chain of events: the closing of jail facilities, reducing the number of deputies and embracing ‘early release’….”

And while the other 4 candidates — all career law enforcement officials — say they’ll fix the early release situation, they haven’t specified how they’ll get the moolah to do so, beyond vague promises to do better with the current budget.

These other candidates are Paul Jernigan, 41, who’s served 18 years as a sheriff’s deputy; Ken Masse, 57, who after close to 35 years with the sheriff’s department retired last year to campaign for sheriff; Ray Leyva, 52, who’s been in the Sheriff’s Department 24 years, and Don Meredith, 53, who’s served 34 years with the Glendale Police Department.

The LA Weekly lays out the big tasks facing Baca after the reelection. The most important, in my view: “find a more compelling way to convince the voters — and the county supervisors — of the need for the proper level of financial support.”

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