FIGHT OVER PUBLIC SAFETY FUNDS RAGES ON.Byline: Andrea Cavanaugh Staff Writer Attorneys for the Ventura County supervisors asked a judge on Monday to overturn portions of an ordinance A law, statute, or regulation enacted by a Municipal Corporation. An ordinance is a law passed by a municipal government. A municipality, such as a city, town, village, or borough, is a political subdivision of a state within which a municipal corporation has been that require increases in public safety spending to be paid from the county's general fund. Monday's hearing is the latest chapter in the legal battle of Sheriff Bob Brooks and District Attorney Greg Totten, who sued the Board of Supervisors last year to get more funding for public safety. Both sides are haggling over a highly contested public safety funding law adopted by the supervisors in 1995 after a citizens' group collected 57,000 signatures to put it on the ballot. Ordinance 4088 requires the county to spend the proceeds from a half- cent statewide sales tax sales tax, levy on the sale of goods or services, generally calculated as a percentage of the selling price, and sometimes called a purchase tax. It is usually collected in the form of an extra charge by the retailer, who remits the tax to the government. on the District Attorney, Public Defender public defender, governmental official who represents indigent persons accused of crime. U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding the right to counsel to pretrial proceedings and holding that a person cannot be sentenced to even one day in jail unless a lawyer was , Probation and Sheriff's departments. The ordinance calls for any public safety inflationary in·fla·tion·ar·y adj. Of, associated with, or tending to cause inflation: inflationary prices; inflationary policies. Adj. 1. costs, such as salary increases, to be paid out of the general fund. In 2001, the supervisors tied the inflationary increases to the Consumer Price Index in an effort to combat public safety cost increases of nearly 10 percent per year, prompting Brooks and Totten to file suit. The supervisors filed a counterclaim A claim by a defendant opposing the claim of the plaintiff and seeking some relief from the plaintiff for the defendant. A counterclaim contains assertions that the defendant could have made by starting a lawsuit if the plaintiff had not already begun the action. , alleging the ordinance is unconstitutional unconstitutional adj. referring to a statute, governmental conduct, court decision or private contract (such as a covenant which purports to limit transfer of real property only to Caucasians) which violate one or more provisions of the U. S. Constitution. because it strips the board of its ability to make spending decisions. Superior Court Judge Henry Walsh is expected to rule on the counterclaim within two weeks. Andrea Cavanaugh, (805) 583-7602 andrea.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com |
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