County costs for hearings to designate someone a sexually violent
predator (SVP) are once again reimbursable after a
hard-fought, long-awaited decision
from the semi-obscure, quasi-judicial Commission on State
Mandates. This represents a big win for counties in an area that
is often a cause for frustration.
The mandate in question requires counties to provide various
services, including indigent defense, for civil commitment
procedures to determine whether an offender should be designated
as a sexually violent predator and therefore detained past the
term of their prison term. The law imposing the mandate has been
in place uninterrupted since the mid-90s, but the history of
whether the state needs to reimburse counties is not so
straightforward.
After the laws in question were established by a series of bills
in 1995 and 1996, Los Angeles County filed a claim for
reimbursement, which the Commission approved in 1998. However, in
2006 there was a flurry of activity related to SVPs, as they are
called. An initiative, Proposition 83, commonly referred to as
Jessica’s Law, qualified for the ballot and passed easily,
although between the qualification and the vote the Legislature
passed a bill nearly identical to it.
The Legislature, seeing their chance to avoid making the $20+
million reimbursements to counties, passed a new law that
essentially allowed the state to file for a mandate
“redetermination” when they state felt that an underlying change
in law could get them out of the required payments. In 2013, the
Department of Finance used that law to file for redetermination
of the SVP mandate and later that year the Commission approved
it, despite the fact that Proposition 83 made no changes
whatsoever to the mandates on counties.
Several counties immediately sued. After several years of
decisions and appeals, the California Supreme Court in November
2018 held that the redetermination was not supported—for
essentially the same reasons counties opposed the redetermination
when it was before the Commission—and ordered the Commission to
revisit the decision. The Commission’s decision last week to deny
the state’s redetermination request restores the reimbursability
of the mandate and represents a hard-fought victory for counties.
In particular, the San Diego county counsel’s office, who led the
lawsuit on behalf of all counties, is to be commended for their
commitment.
Counties will be able to file for reimbursement for the SVP
mandate immediately, including for the last several years,
although the reimbursements themselves will likely be delayed
until at least next year’s state budget.
