Legal, Political Perils Shadow Budget Talks by Supervisors

Faced with shifting tides in politics and population that could bring great and permanent change to county government, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Monday opened public hearings on its record $8.9-billion spending plan for the coming fiscal year.

This year’s budget hearing ritual is different from recent years because it comes at a time when the board in general, and a key member of the conservative majority in particular, are under attack for not being truly representative of constituents.

The U.S. Justice Department, which is planning to file a civil rights lawsuit against the supervisors, argues that the growing Latino population, concentrated in a low-income swath of the central county, has been systematically excluded from fair representation by the way the five white supervisors have drawn their political districts.

Political Troubles

At the same time, conservative Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who represents the largely white valleys in the north area of the county, is battling for his political survival after being forced into a November runoff by constituents upset over his past pro-growth policies and alliances with developers.

A loss by Antonovich to his remaining challenger, former Supervisor Baxter Ward, would shift the balance of power toward the liberal Democratic axis represented by longtime board members Kenneth Hahn and Ed Edelman.

Both threats may well come into play in the current hearings on the 1988-89 spending plan. The budget is perhaps the single most important statement the supervisors make about what they think is most and least important.

For example, under the conservative majority, which swept into office on the Reagan tide in 1980, the priorities clearly were building up law enforcement and shrinking the county’s huge social service and welfare bureaucracies.

The budgets also have reflected--although some critics say not nearly enough--various issues that have caught the public’s attention. Increased funding and better coordination of homeless programs a few years ago is one example.

Given the current challenge from the Justice Department, the board will be trying to demonstrate that it is indeed representative and responsive to the needs of Latinos, who, among other things, rely heavily on the county hospital and clinic system for health care.

Fiscal Representation

Richard Fajardo, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the distribution of funds to different areas and ethnic groups in county budgets is one measure of representation. “I think that’s one thing the Justice Department will be looking at,” said Fajardo, who worked with federal attorneys in a suit that in 1986 forced the Los Angeles City Council to redraw its districts. “But I would say it’s not enough to simply be responsive for one or two years in light of the (current) pressure.”

Notably, this is one of the rare years since passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 that no cuts in health care are proposed that would trigger a round of special state-mandated public hearings.

As for Antonovich, having run weakly in several white, middle-class areas of his 5th District last week, he can ill-afford to alienate any new groups, including poor minorities who have not been a major part of his traditional base of support.

But just how far the other conservatives on the board--Pete Schabarum and Deane Dana--will go during this budget cycle to help Antonovich meet political needs is unclear. Continuing personal feuds and, to a lesser extent, philosophical differences have broken down the alliance in the last year. Schabarum, who has been highly critical of Antonovich and Dana, told The Times recently that there no longer is a conservative majority.

Monday’s low-key opening round of discussions focused largely on the “trade-offs” being proposed in the $200-million budget for the county Probation Department, which evaluates and supervises thousands of adult and juvenile offenders. In response to the recent wave of gang violence, the department is shifting money from regular probation programs into a special project intended to catch and redirect the youngest gang members before they become committed to lives of drugs and crime.

But a top Los Angeles Police Department official showed up to plead with the supervisors not to cut any part of the overloaded Probation Department. Deputy Chief Bernard Parks noted that to balance the budget and fund the new anti-gang program, other probation officers’ juvenile caseloads will go from 150 to 500. “Prevention is important but we have to recognize that there are other significant kinds of crime,” Parks said.

But shortly before the hearing, the county’s largest employee union attacked the proposed budget for over-emphasizing law enforcement at the expense of health and mental health services. Union officials said justice-related departments would grow by 1,362 workers, or 6.5%, while other county departments averaged less than a 1% increase.

“More than any other action of the county, this disproportionate budget is a politically driven document meant to express the political priorities of the (board’s) conservative majority,” said Brian Sheppard, research director for the 40,000-member Local 660 Service Employees International Union.

Times staff writers Daryl Kelley and Victor Merina contributed to this story.