County’s Costs Adding Up in Rampart Probe

Sorting out the criminal justice ramifications of the Rampart police corruption scandal could cost Los Angeles County government at least $6 million next year.

The county’s projected legal costs, though a tiny fraction of its $15-billion budget, are still significant. For example, $6 million is the estimated cost to the county of maintaining 10% of the 1,869 beds in the county’s six public hospitals.

The preliminary estimate comes from what county officials say are the current costs of lawyers and others working for the public defender, alternate public defender and district attorney’s offices investigating the corruption case, and reviewing past criminal cases to see which may have been tainted by testimony involving LAPD anti-gang officers accused of framing and brutalizing people.

All three agencies are using employees who normally would perform other tasks and are asking the Board of Supervisors to allow them to fill their former positions. But the agencies have included a significant caveat in their budget requests: If the scope of the scandal continues to grow, so could the costs.

The $6 million does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars expected to be paid in taxpayer funds to settle lawsuits stemming from the worst police corruption case in city history. County officials expect that money to largely, if not entirely, come from city coffers.

The cost estimates have been made to the county’s chief administrative office, which will present the Board of Supervisors with a budget next month to be voted on in June. With government coffers flush from the economic expansion, county officials have predicted no serious problems balancing their budget.

Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said Thursday that the county is projected to have $47 million in surplus revenue to spread among 37 county departments. “Rampart may or may not be a part of that,” he said.

With new revelations spilling out about the alleged corruption at Rampart virtually every week, officials say, they have only the sketchiest idea of what the scandal will finally cost the mass of government agencies that make up the county.

The district attorney’s office has yet to submit its request for money to pay for the Rampart investigation in next year’s budget. “This is a dynamic situation where it keeps changing,” said David Guthman, the office’s budget director.

But the district attorney’s office did recently give the county’s budget office an estimate of what it is spending on its existing task force of nearly 30 prosecutors, investigators and support staff probing the Rampart case. That alone is costing about $3 million, county sources said.

That number may be low, Guthman said Thursday. “There’s no surprise that there is a cost there,” he said. “This is a team of people that keeps growing. It may be double that number by the time it finishes.”

One indication of the fluidity of the situation is the amount of money the public defender’s office has requested for its Rampart needs. The office had pulled seven lawyers from routine criminal cases to scour its files to find those who may have been wrongfully convicted by the allegedly crooked LAPD officers.

Last month, the public defender requested about $1.7 million to fund this unit. But as the scandal’s scope has increased, the office has boosted its task force size and costs. Assistant Public Defender Robert Kalunian on Thursday said his agency now was asking for $2.5 million for a unit of 11 lawyers, plus three investigators and clerical staff.

In interviews, Kalunian also has repeatedly stressed that his agency’s needs may grow. Among other reasons, he noted that so far his office has been in agreement with the district attorney over which convictions are tainted. “I would assume we’re going to reach a point where we’re going to have contested cases,” he said.

The alternate public defender’s office, which provides lawyers at taxpayer expense to defendants who have a conflict with the public defender’s office, also has not formalized in writing its needs from Rampart. But a county source close to the budget process said that office was asking for about $1 million to fund its unit reviewing cases.

Alternate Public Defender Bruce Hoffman could not be reached for comment.