State Cuts Put Squeeze on Alcohol Investigators : Budget: With most of Orange County’s state ABC officers facing layoffs, police and restaurateurs wonder how the job of enforcement and license processing will get done.

Joseph Cruz stood under a cone of light in the Los Sanchez Bar and Restaurant parking lot, unwinding after a night of policing local bars.

Joining Anaheim police in a surprise sweep of the raucous bar, Cruz helped arrest four patrons on suspicion of drug use, public drunkenness and carrying a concealed weapon.

“One side is a restaurant, the rest is just bedlam,” said Cruz, 29, a supervising investigator for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the low-profile state agency that enforces state laws governing liquor sales and processes liquor license applications.

“If we had more time we could crack down” on more places like Los Sanchez, Cruz said.

But time appears to be short for Cruz and most other ABC agents statewide. Gov. Pete Wilson, in trying to balance the state budget, cut $4.9 million from the agency’s $23-million budget this fiscal year, resulting in layoff notices this week for 10 of 13 investigators in Orange County and nearly three quarters of investigators statewide.

Barring unexpected eleventh-hour negotiations between the Wilson Administration and the state employees union representing ABC investigators, a recent early Saturday morning sweep will be one of the last for Cruz and most of his co-workers based in Santa Ana.

The layoffs are a strike against law enforcement, ABC and its supporters said, because fewer investigators may lead to lax oversight of state liquor laws, opening the way for more sales to minors and drunken bar patrons. It will also dump more work onto local police officers and sheriff’s deputies, they maintain.

Police officers, who often work with ABC investigators on bar sweeps, said they have to contend with their own budget cuts and do not have the personnel to monitor bars as ABC can.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen exactly with ABC,” Anaheim Police Capt. Roger Baker said.

Baker, who oversees vice and drug operations, said fewer ABC investigators may lead to weaker law enforcement at bars in Anaheim, which leads the county in the number of liquor licenses.

ABC investigators, who carry handguns and handcuffs, made 141 arrests in the county from July, 1990, to June, 1991. Agents filed 269 accusations, which is like a ticket, to suspend or revoke a liquor license. Of those accusations, 65% were for sales to minors, county district administrator Dale Rasmussen said.

From their Santa Ana office, the ABC handled more than 1,000 applications for liquor licenses in the county, agency officials said.

Reduced ABC staffing will probably be felt outside of law enforcement as well. Businesses will have to wait longer for liquor license applications, because there will be fewer agents to deal with background checks on applicants, ABC officials said.

The current 60- to 90-day waiting period to get a license to sell beer and wine could double or triple after the layoffs, officials said.

Some business people in the county complain that cutbacks in ABC staffing will leave them in a lurch. Enzo De Muro, president of Italatin Restaurant Group, said he has applied for a beer and wine license for an Italian restaurant he hopes to open Nov. 25 in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza.

“Normally, you are on a tight schedule when you open a restaurant,” De Muro said, but “right now we are in limbo. We don’t know anything” about whether the staffing cuts will mean a longer wait for his license.

“We want to open a restaurant in March, and the ABC people said they don’t know if we’ll have enough time” for the liquor license application to clear, De Muro said.

As ammunition for their argument against layoffs, ABC supporters point out that the agency makes more money for the state than it spends. For example, the agency generated $10.7 million for the state general fund last fiscal year through fees, surcharges and fines, said Bob Pipkin, a spokesman for the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, which helps establish ABC policy.

Wilson said his hand was forced on the layoff decision because the California Union of Safety Employees would not allow a 5% pay cut for members.

A 5% cut, Wilson said, would save about 35 ABC investigator jobs statewide.

Wilson spokesman James Lee said the cuts are an outgrowth of larger problems in the state. “We’re not able to give the type of resources that this governor would like to,” he said.

Even with the layoffs, Wilson projects that the agency will continue to generate more money than it spends. Pipkin said the governor’s office predicts that ABC will add $30.3 million to the general fund this year.

Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) has called the ABC budget cut “shortsighted and irresponsible” and has pledged to draw up a bill to restore nearly $5 million.

“The governor is in for a battle when the Assembly reconvenes in January,” he said recently.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which passes along information to ABC investigators about bars that sell liquor to minors, is left wondering how the cuts will affect their program. The county MADD chapter has written to Wilson to protest the planned cuts.

“If the state is going to license these sites, then it should provide for enforcement,” chapter administrator Janet Cater said. “MADD is against anything that could result in more drunk drivers on the road.”

Cater said that with fewer ABC investigators, she fears that “we will slip-slide back” on enforcement against sales to minors.