COUNTYWIDE : Supervisors Given Budget Warning

The county’s top financial officials warned members of the Board of Supervisors on Monday that if they give in to pressure from departments and citizens’ groups, they could be forced to make even deeper cuts and larger layoffs next year.

“If you just look at what we’re projecting for next year, we’re very, very short,” said Steven E. Lewis, the county auditor-controller. “The board’s under a lot of political pressure, but they need to keep that in mind.”

Even before work begins on next year’s budget, the county is more than $72 million short of making ends meet. Any programs that are restored to this year’s budget will just make that deficit worse and will compound the problems faced by the Board of Supervisors when it crafts the 1992-93 budget next summer, officials said.

“Restoration of anything now only makes next year’s problem that much bigger,” said Ronald S. Rubino, the county’s budget director. “We still have some challenges ahead of us. The board is doing a great job with the budget, but there are still a few issues to go.”

Those warnings come as departments are furiously lobbying to regain some of the jobs and programs that would be lost under a proposed budget that the supervisors tentatively adopted last month. Two popular commissions, a homeless shelter program, a volunteer operation that distributes gifts to poor children at Christmas and the sheriff’s helicopter patrol are among the services that officials are lobbying to restore.

Those and other services were cut in the proposed budget to help close the county’s $67.7-million shortfall. That spending plan eliminated 350 county positions and is expected to force the first layoffs since 1978, when voters approved Proposition 13, the landmark tax-cutting initiative.

Officials this year relied on more than $30 million in one-time revenue to balance their proposed budget. That money will not be available next year.

In addition, county officials will be slapped with a full-year bill for the expanded Theo Lacy Branch Jail, expansion of the juvenile Intake-Release Center, and anticipated salary increases for county workers of 4%.

All told, those increases and a few others leave the county facing a shortfall of more than $70 million next year, Rubino said.

“I’m getting stacks of postcards and letters asking me, begging me to restore those commissions,” Supervisor Don R. Roth said. “It’s going to be tough to say no, but we’ve got a problem. . . . I wish we had a pot of money that we could use to restore everything, but we don’t.”

Lewis, who said he has been pleased by the supervisors’ willingness to hold a hard line on the budget so far, previously has warned the board of the need to take strong action.

“All projections of future county revenues indicate significant shortfalls for years to come,” Lewis said in a July 22 letter to the board. “If we do not begin making the necessary service-level cuts this fiscal year, it may be impossible to demonstrate to the financial community that we have the political will to keep the county on solid financial footing.”

Supervisors say they are acutely aware of Lewis’ concerns, and although they expect to reinstate some programs, many are hoping to limit it to those programs most crucial to the government’s operations.

“We recognize that reinstatement will take a toll on the budget,” Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez said. “I don’t think anyone that gets reinstated this year should view this as a signal that they will be around next year. This is a temporary lease on life.”

Supervisors are expected to vote on the final budget Aug. 27.