O.C. to Sell Ranch Seized in Drug Raid

SANTA ANA —  Despite vociferous objections from Sheriff Brad Gates and his supporters, Orange County supervisors voted Tuesday to sell the 213-acre Rancho del Rio, seized in a 1985 drug raid, rather than turn it into a narcotics enforcement training center.

The vote repeated earlier board actions to sell the land, and it did not come as a surprise. The county staff had recommended selling the property--valued at $1.4 million. Board Chairman Don R. Roth argued that the sale was necessary, given the county’s current budget woes.

The supervisors unanimously agreed, and their action infuriated Gates. Following the meeting, the visibly angered sheriff lashed out at the board.

“They just cut my guts out in the war on drugs in this county,” Gates said. “The morale of the law enforcement officers here just took a big blow.”

The ranch, which was visited by President Bush last year to highlight his anti-drug campaign, has been an object of a long tug of war among county officials, and Tuesday was not the first time that tempers flared between Gates and members of the Board of Supervisors.

The raw feelings were evident even before the board vote. Supervisors bristled at criticism from supporters of the sheriff, who have been lobbying hard for the training center.

Gates prefaced his plea for board support with an acknowledgement that he was not expecting it.

“I feel like Jesse James going down to the corral at the barn right now, and the guns have been loaded, and they’re AK-47s instead of six-shooters that I’m used to,” Gates said as he approached the lectern to address the board. “That’s the way it comes across to me at the beginning here.”

Seized in 1985, Rancho del Rio became the most prominent symbol of the county’s war on drugs.

The owner of the ranch, Daniel James Fowlie, was recently extradited from Mexico and is scheduled to stand trial on drug-smuggling charges.

“Many of you know the history of the ground we stand on,” Bush said during his 1989 visit. “Once a warehouse of death, now it’s a source of hope. Rancho del Rio has been reclaimed.”

But while Gates lobbied to turn the ranch into a regional drug enforcement training center, board members were grappling with a budget problem and have long expressed concerns about the potential cost of operating such a center.

No other county government in the nation operates such a facility, board members said Tuesday, and even though Gates pledged that he would pay for the center using private money and grants, supervisors were clearly wary.

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, for instance, pointedly asked the sheriff whether he had already sought federal and state support for such a facility. Vasquez arched an eyebrow when Gates conceded that neither government had so far agreed to provide funding.

Tuesday’s debate came on the heels of a recent session in which county finance officers warned the supervisors that they face a $13-million deficit in their midyear budget. Supervisors, faced with the possibility of an even more serious shortfall once the state finishes cutting its budget, said they preferred to try selling the ranch and using the proceeds to pay for other programs.

Roth said he hoped the proceeds could be used to pay for expanding the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange.

“I’m trying to get some fiscal responsibility here and see that Theo Lacy gets opened as scheduled,” said Roth, who fought for that controversial jail expansion in his own district. “We have to do something, and this is one thing we can do.”

Under its agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, the county must either turn the property into a training center or use any proceeds from its sale to augment law enforcement functions. Gates has argued for a narrow definition of that agreement and has said he believes the money can only be used for fighting drugs.

Vasquez, however, met with Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh last spring and was told by senior officials in the Justice Department that the money could be used for other law enforcement purposes.

NEXT STEP

Rancho del Rio will probably go on the market in February. The land has an estimated value of $1.4 million. One possible bidder may be the county’s own harbors, beaches and parks division. But a Justice Department official questions whether one county agency could buy it from another. The Justice Department has the right to approve or disapprove the sale price and buyer.