Head of Cities League Assails Budget Bill : Mayor Warns of Losses, Denounces Congressional ‘Cowardice’

In a blistering attack on the proposed federal budget-balancing plan, the head of the National League of Cities on Sunday denounced the measure and accused Congress of pushing an idea that typifies “cowardice in its worst sense.”

Warning that the plan would wreak “irreparable damage” to cities, Cleveland Mayor George V. Voinovich said that local officials and their lobbyists are mobilized to make a “last-ditch stand” against the deficit-reduction measure.

But at a news conference here where 4,000 mayors, council members and other local officials are gathered for their annual convention, Voinovich, a Republican and the league’s president, acknowledged that passage of the controversial plan is likely, although he said it could prove unworkable or politically unpalatable.

Approval Expected

The sweeping balanced-budget legislation, approved last week by key House and Senate negotiators, is expected to win approval in conference committee today and by both houses of Congress on Wednesday.

Under the plan, which negotiators predicted President Reagan will sign, a series of declining deficit targets would be set over the next five years in an effort to eliminate deficit-spending by 1991. If Congress and the White House should fail to meet those statutory ceilings on budget deficits, automatic spending cuts would take place.

Although the cuts would fall equally on defense and domestic programs, Voinovich and other city officials here claim that the cuts, which could come as early as March, would hit their constituents hardest.

According to league officials, municipal governments stand to lose $5 billion next year with the elimination of as many as 50 domestic programs, including popular spending such as general revenue sharing.

Programs Face Cuts

They said that only 13% of the total $1.4-trillion federal budget would be subject to cuts under the plan but that city programs would be trimmed across the board, including cuts in community development funds, urban development grants and money for clean water programs.

“It’s cowardice in the worst sense,” Voinovich said of the budget-balancing plan, and he added that “the people in Washington know what must be done and haven’t the guts to do it.”

Voinovich said he favors alternative measures such as an increase in the federal income tax and elimination of some tax deductions. But Congress and the Reagan Administration, he contended, are content “washing their hands like Pontius Pilates and walking away” from the likely fallout of their deficit-reduction plan.

For the City of Los Angeles, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said the impact could prove “cataclysmic.”

City Faces Loss

Yaroslavsky, who chairs the council’s Finance and Revenue Committee, said the city would face an immediate loss of a $3-million payment in general revenue sharing funds next spring and an unknown loss in community development bloc grant money.

But he said the more serious concern is the possible loss of the entire $55 million in revenue sharing money for the city’s next fiscal year. Such a loss could eliminate 1,500 to 2,000 city jobs out of the city’s 30,000-member work force, he said.

Yaroslavsky said it is uncertain whether layoffs would occur but said an immediate hiring freeze might be needed. In addition, Yaroslavsky said, the federal budget plan--by “emasculating” the federal clean water program--would severely hamper the city’s efforts to upgrade and repair its troubled sewage system.

Although Voinovich and other officials said that their own cities could face local tax increases if the budget-balancing plan is passed, Yaroslavsky said he doubts such an increase would occur in Los Angeles.

“Every avenue would have to be exhausted before that can even be on the agenda,” Yaroslavsky said.

Under the proposed federal plan, Social Security and some other benefit programs would be exempt. Without spending cuts or tax increases, deficits are expected to remain at or above $200 billion a year in the foreseeable future. The balanced-budget plan would set deficit ceilings of $171.9 billion this year and $144 billion in fiscal 1987.