Hunter Calls for Budget Partnership : Government: Mayors of Anaheim and 9 other California cities travel to Sacramento to deliver their plea to the governor.

Anaheim Mayor Fred Hunter and other California mayors trekked to Sacramento on Tuesday to plead with Gov. Pete Wilson not to balance the state’s deficit-plagued budget on the shoulders of cities.

While other mayors detailed the horrors of past budget cuts to Wilson during a private, hourlong meeting Tuesday morning, Hunter said he quoted the Bible to the governor to demonstrate that the mayors wanted to be his partners during this budgetary mess.

“No. 1, I told him thanks for listening to us,” Hunter said after the meeting. “No. 2, I quoted him a Scripture from Proverbs that says: ‘Can two walk together unless they be agreed?’

“And around the table I heard words like partnership and together, “ Hunter said. “The mayors, I thought, were very amicable to talk about, ‘Hey, we want to work with you on this problem. We don’t want to be your enemy.’ ”

Yet the mayoral emissaries to the Capitol also delivered a blunt message, with some of the chief executives of California’s largest cities telling Wilson and others that they can’t be expected to make any more cuts to help balance a budgetary shortfall that by 1993 is projected to reach $11 billion.

“There is a myth abroad in the state, especially here in Sacramento . . . that the cities are in Fat City and they don’t need any financial help (and) that we can take care of our problems by ourselves,” said Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

“That’s simply not so and we tried to make that very clear,” he said.

The trek by Hunter, Bradley and the mayors of San Diego, Fresno, San Jose, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Sacramento, Long Beach and Monrovia was the latest by a group here seeking dispensation from what inevitably will be brutal cuts stemming from the state’s budget crisis. School groups and mental health advocates have already paid visits to Sacramento.

In pleading their case, Bradley and other mayors said they have already been forced to trim 3,200 employees statewide, reduce services, put a freeze on hiring and--in Los Angeles alone--reduce the authorized strength of the police force from 8,300 officers to 7,900.

Meanwhile, about 70% of the cities have been forced to raise taxes and fees to make up for the loss of revenue caused by past state budget crunches.

One of them was Anaheim, which increased its hotel tax from 11% to 13%, Hunter said. A fraction of the new revenue, he said, was used to hire 12 new police officers for the city, which is heavily dependent on tourism for its economic livelihood.

Although Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm have insulated Anaheim somewhat from budgetary woes, Hunter said the city has seen a decrease in sales tax receipts, and last year took a “big hit,” slashing $19 million from the city’s $130-million general fund.

“We’ve had a hiring freeze for two years,” Hunter said. “We have basically laid off . . . about 158 full-time employees and 53 part-time employees.”

One change, which seriously affected cities, allowed counties to charge the cities about $100 million statewide to book prisoners and perform property assessments, Bradley said during a press conference Tuesday.

While not pointing a finger directly at the counties, Bradley said the new fees allowed 53 of the state’s 58 counties to avoid tax increases last year--and he indirectly suggested that they be made to bite the bullet during this current budget crisis.

“There needs to be a recognition that you can’t get it all out of the cities,” Bradley said. “If we have to pass new taxes, let’s all share in that. We took our step forward and faced up to the issue and we’re simply saying: ‘Let others now join us.’ ”

Bradley’s discussion of the booking fees indicated that city leaders were still upset that the fee provisions were made law in 1990 after cities had approved their budgets, catching them off guard with an added expense.

Preventing such surprises from Sacramento in the future was another major reason Hunter said he and the other mayors paid a visit to the governor Tuesday. He said Wilson and other leaders promised not to pass similar last-minute measures this year.