RAMPART SCANDAL'S COST TO COUNTY RISING FAST

The estimated bill for investigations has nearly doubled in two
months, with no end in sight.

The Rampart scandal's cost to Los Angeles County government has nearly
doubled over the past two months, and officials now say they will need
25 cents out of every new dollar available to the county for next
year--money that otherwise could go to chronically underfunded areas
such as public hospitals or child-abuse investigations.

Moreover, the Rampart-related $11.4-million price tag is expected to
grow, as additional allegations of corruption are unearthed in other
Los Angeles police divisions.

The county's growing Rampart bill demonstrates how the effects of the
worst police scandal in Los Angeles city history are sprawling well
beyond, not only City Hall, but also the Los Angeles city limits.
County officials have repeatedly said Rampart is a city problem, but
now they are finding their bank accounts increasingly pinched by it.

"These are real dollars and their [diversion] is going to have a
severe impact on ensuring that vital services are provided to our
citizens," said Supervisor Mike Antonovich, most of whose district is
outside the city of Los Angeles.

The legal departments of the county--the offices of the district
attorney, public defender and alternate public defender--now are
estimating they will need $11.4 million to investigate the scandal and
review cases in which people may have been wrongfully convicted,
officials say.

In March, those three departments pegged their Rampart-related costs
at $6.5 million, warning that the figures might increase.

They have.

"We can see very clearly that the number of cases we will be required
to review has expanded exponentially," Public Defender Michael Judge
said, citing cases now dating to 1991 and involving officers at six of
the LAPD's 18 divisions.

Attorneys in all three county offices have been pulled from regular
assignments to deal with the scandal, and Judge, Alternate Public
Defender Bruce Hoffman and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti are all seeking
funds from the county to replace those lawyers' salaries in next
year's budget, allowing resumption of the work they would have been
doing.

The proposed budget, which was unveiled by county Chief Administrative
Officer David Janssen last month, contained no increases for Rampart,
but that was mainly because the costs of the scandal were expected to
grow, Janssen said.

He said that county reserves should be able to absorb many of the
costs, as may surplus funds available to the district attorney's
office now that the state has moved to transfer the office's
child-support operations.

The Rampart expenses still constitute a fraction of the county's
$15-billion budget. But in the county's preliminary budget, Janssen
had allocated $48 million extra that the booming economy has pumped
into the coffers to shore up crumbling buildings and into
long-neglected public services. Now, if supervisors agree to cover the
$11.4 million in Rampart expenses, the county will either have to
redistribute one-fourth of that extra money or find money that
otherwise would have gone to the Sheriff's Department, child-abuse
investigators, public hospitals or other needs that, through many lean
years, have gone unmet among the county's 37 agencies.

Supervisors will decide whether to reimburse some of the legal
agencies for their Rampart costs when they finalize their budget in
June. Contracts with private attorneys representing indigent
defendants are automatically hiked to compensate for public defenders
and alternate public defenders who have been pulled from their
caseload to investigate Rampart, Janssen said.

The county has been hoping to avoid paying any damages in the Rampart
scandal, in which LAPD officers allegedly beat and framed dozens of
people, some of whom pleaded guilty because they feared their accounts
of police corruption would not be taken seriously.

Though many of the 99 people so far identified as wrongfully convicted
are expected to name county officials as well as city officials in
their suits because they were prosecuted by the county district
attorney's office, county lawyers are arguing that prosecutors enjoy
immunity from civil liability.

The city's anticipated liability was pegged at $125 million earlier
this year, when the scandal was still in its infancy, and more than
one-quarter the city's new funds are designated for Rampart costs in
Mayor Richard Riordan's new budget.

The district attorney's office has put its Rampart costs at $4.3
million to operate a squad investigating the scandal, which officials
expect to grow to 40 people by the time the county's new fiscal year
begins July 1. "Our best estimate at the present time is that's what
it's going to cost," said budget director David Guthman, who had
cautioned two months ago that the office's $3 million estimate would
grow. Of the latest number, he said, "If it's going to change it'd go
up, not down."

The public defender's office says it is spending $4.4 million on the
scandal for a unit of investigators and 20 attorneys, as opposed to
the $2.5 million it reported in March. That unit is also taxed by a
battle with the district attorney's office over allegedly illegal
wiretapping, which Public Defender Judge said is also eating up
staffing and overtime.

Finally, the alternate public defender's office--which represents
indigent defendants when the public defender's office has a conflict
of interest--is asking for $2.8 million to fund its Rampart unit, up
from $1 million in March.

If the departments get funding for their Rampart units, supervisors
have asked what the money will be spent on when the scandal eventually
dwindles. Guthman of the district attorney's office said the number of
new attorneys the money would fund is less than the agency's annual
turnover and the sums could be absorbed through attrition.

In response to questioning at a budget hearing Wednesday, Alternate
Public Defender Hoffman said he expects Rampart "to take several years."

And after that is done, Hoffman said, his office will need extra
lawyers to deal with increased prosecutions of juveniles as adults
subject to the death penalty as authorized by Proposition 21, passed
by the voters in March.