Liquor Panel Cutbacks Assailed : Budget: Alcohol control officials say Gov. Wilson’s proposed layoffs will leave it unable to enforce and regulate sales.

The state’s plans to gut the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control will stymie investigations of illegal alcohol sales and stall the efforts of restaurants and hotels to obtain liquor licenses throughout Los Angeles County, ABC officials and community activists say.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s budget-cutting plans will virtually destroy the ABC’s ability to investigate complaints and process license applications, said David Robbins, district administrator of the ABC’s Los Angeles Metropolitan office.

“We’ll grind to a halt,” Robbins, who heads one of five offices that serve the county, said in an interview.

The state announced plans last week to lay off nearly three-quarters of the ABC’s investigators. Wilson has said the plan will save $5 million in salaries; critics note that the ABC generates revenues of at least $10 million more than its annual budget.

Community activists are also outraged at the plans, saying that overburdened police departments throughout Los Angeles will be unable to keep up with the crime generated by illegal sales of liquor--crimes that, they argue, the ABC’s supervision prevents.

“To even consider cutting that staff, I think, is an irresponsible position,” said Don Schultz, head of the planning committee for the San Fernando Valley Alcohol Policy Coalition, a group that fights the issuing of liquor licenses in high-crime areas.

The coalition, several homeowner groups and City Councilman Joel Wachs plan to announce a campaign Monday to persuade the governor to reverse the decision.

The ABC’s duties include making background checks on businesses applying for liquor licenses, and enforcing state laws governing the sale of alcohol by license holders, such as the laws against selling alcohol to minors and to intoxicated adults.

With the layoffs, the ABC in Los Angeles County stands to be reduced to a staff of 10 or 12 investigators from a current body of about 55, Robbins said. Southern California would also lose a seven-member drug enforcement team, he said.

Under the planned cuts, the Inglewood office, which oversees licensing in Beverly Hills, the Westside, the southern beach cities and South-Central Los Angeles, will be closed.

That office, which currently processes an average of 60 applications a month, will see its workload redistributed to the remaining four offices--which will also undergo dramatic reductions in staffing.

“In terms of enforcement efforts, there won’t be any at all,” Robbins said. “In terms of licensing, we will be so overwhelmed by the numbers . . . (that) we’re going to be hard-put to do any application work at all.”

He said hotels and restaurants seeking liquor licenses can expect long delays as their applications wend their way through the system.

“It could be a year or more for an application to be processed,” Robbins said. “As every month goes by, (the work) will just pile up and pile up . . . and we will be totally backlogged.”

Currently, it takes 60 to 90 days for a liquor license to be granted or transferred, Robbins said. About 800 are pending in Los Angeles County, he said.

As hotels, restaurants and other businesses are stalled in their efforts to open with liquor licenses, there will be a ripple effect in the economy of Los Angeles, which would lose sales tax revenue and suffer higher levels of unemployment, ABC officials say.

Martin Hibsch, supervising investigator at the Inglewood office, which is scheduled to be closed, said he has been inundated with telephone calls from people asking where they will be able to file complaints in the future.

“There is fear these people (illegal vendors of alcohol) are going to run amok,” he said.

Last year, the Inglewood office brought charges against 495 licensees who broke the law, the highest number of cases in the state, Hibsch said.

At the Van Nuys office, which covers the San Fernando, Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, the number of investigators is expected to be reduced from 10 to two, leaving little time for an already overworked staff to conduct thorough background checks or enforce regulations, ABC officials said.

“Enforcement will probably be left with local police,” said Walter Jarman, a supervisor in the Van Nuys district. “We won’t have the manpower to do any enforcement.”

But Los Angeles police officials said it is unlikely that they will be able to pick up the slack.

“We are thin to begin with,” said Capt. Valentino Paniccia, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division. “We can’t pick up any more enforcement. Any cutback in ABC enforcement won’t be picked up.”

Sgt. Bob Freet of the Van Nuys Division Vice Squad said police already handle most enforcement tactics such as sting operations that target stores that sell alcohol to minors. But the cases are handed off to ABC officers, who are responsible for prosecuting businesses that violate alcohol laws.

Through administrative hearings, the ABC can seek suspension or forfeiture of the offending businesses’ alcohol licenses. That process already takes months, officials concede. With the proposed cuts, it may take even longer.

Some activists and police predict that liquor license holders will no longer feel compelled to abide by state regulations.

“The liquor business is going to be an unregulated business,” said Robin Little, chairwoman of the San Fernando Valley Alcohol Policy Coalition.

Others, however, said the ABC has been ineffective for some time because of staff shortages, forcing community leaders to take other steps--such as fighting a city’s issuance of a conditional use permit to a business--to prevent the proliferation of alcohol-selling establishments.