Cities Tell State to Keep Hands Off Funds : Budget: Leaders say revenues will be unfairly seized under a plan touted by the governor and legislative leaders. Property taxes earmarked for municipalities would be shifted to schools.

Angry city officials, stung by proposed state measures to squeeze about $1 billion in general fund money out of city and county budgets, say Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature should try running the state government the way they run their cities.

“Instead of restructuring the government, the state lawmakers are sidestepping the big issues,” Claremont Councilwoman Judy Wright said. “If we did what the state is doing, we’d be out of office.”

Word filtered out last week from closed-door budget meetings between Wilson and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Legislature that a portion of state property taxes cities have received for 14 years might be shifted to public schools.

City officials were also told that legislative leaders were considering seizing the cities’ share of revenues from state vehicle licensing fees as part of an intricately structured plan to close the state’s anticipated $10.7-billion budget gap.

If the Legislature approves the measures, 31 cities in the San Gabriel Valley and Glendale areas stand to lose a total of about $75 million in revenue, according to figures prepared by the California League of Cities.

When word of the state discussions arrived last week, many cities in the region, beset by shrinking revenue, had just completed tortuous, cost-cutting budget sessions of their own. Others were in the midst of winnowing “frills” and excising city jobs from their fiscal 1993 budgets.

Glendale stands to take the biggest single hit in dollars, with projected losses of almost $8.8 million. “Ironically, we just completed a six-month process of eliminating $8.8 million from our general fund budget,” City Manager David Ramsay said. “It’s just a slashing process. Now there’s the potential for the state to say, ‘Do it again.’ It’s devastating.”

City officials challenged state leaders to do the same “line by line” analysis of the state budget. “They’re so removed from their state constituency that they can take someone else’s money to balance their budget,” Wright fumed.

Under what most city officials conceded was a worst-case scenario, several cities could lose up to 22% of their general fund budgets if the measures are implemented.

Among the hardest hit would be Baldwin Park, which is already wrestling with a drastic revenue shrinkage. The city stands to lose the equivalent of 40% of its law enforcement budget, or $2.8 million out of a general fund budget of $12.2 million, Mayor Fidel A. Vargas said

Even before the bad news arrived from the state, the City Council was preparing a budget that was pared by 5%, said Vargas, who was elected two months ago. “We’re sitting ducks right now,” he said.

The City Council of Temple City, which could lose more than 20% of its $4.9-million budget, voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize spending $3,000 on newspaper advertising and hand-delivered notices urging residents to tell legislators that they are outraged.

At a press conference Monday at Pasadena City Hall, mayors and council members from 19 cities responded testily to remarks last week by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown comparing local governments to drug addicts.

“We should never have bailed out local governments,” Brown said, referring to a formula worked out by state leaders after the passage of Proposition 13, giving cities and counties a portion of state-collected property taxes. “That was a mistake. They became like heroin addicts. You have to keep feeding them.”

Several mayors referred to the property tax money the cities receive as “our money.”

“I’m here to dispute the concept that the state has bailed out the cities,” Pasadena Mayor Rick Cole said. “For the past several years, it’s been the cities that have been bailing out the state.”

He cited state cutbacks in environmental, education and social programs that have forced many cities and counties to take up the slack. “We’re finding ourselves having to deal with the homeless and environmental problems on our own,” Cole said.

He said the state squeezed the cities two years ago by passing legislation that allowed counties to charge for tax collection and jail services, and also reduced the cities’ share of state cigarette taxes and vehicle licensing fees.

Some city officials complained that the cities are politically vulnerable and, therefore, easy targets.

“The cities are not that well organized politically,” Cole said. “There’s very little loyalty to us (in the Legislature). There are very few former elected local officials there. Most come up through the staff system and don’t have a clue about local government.”

State officials suffer from a widespread misconception that “the cities aren’t suffering enough,” Ramsay added.

“It’s simply not true,” he said. “What the cities have been doing all along is cutting and cutting and cutting. We’ve been making the tough decisions since Proposition 13, and it doesn’t appear that the state has.”

He said that Glendale’s ratio of employees to residents had decreased from 112 per 10,000 in 1970 to 85 per 10,000 today, although services increased. “The cities have become more efficient,” he said.

City officials, who are proscribed by state law from making decisions behind closed doors, complained bitterly about the secrecy of state budget discussions.

“I assume they’ll just come out on a white cloud and announce that it’s done,” Claremont Mayor Diann Ring said.

How Green Was Their Valley

Here are the percentages of proposed cutbacks in state funding to local municipal budgets.

BUDGET % CUTS Alhambra $26,804,598 14.88 Arcadia $23,315,223 10.45 Azusa $18,925,234 10.16 Baldwin Park $12,224,300 22.63 Bradbury N/A N/A Claremont $9,220,000 16.94 Covina $17,670,810 12.26 Diamond Bar $8,500,000 21.93 Duarte $5,706,600 14.63 El Monte $27,000,000 17.58 Glendora $12,857,649 17.49 Industry N/A N/A Irwindale N/A N/A La Puente $7,090,620 18.52 La Verne $11,613,424 13.35 Monrovia $14,743,000 14.30 Monterey Park $18,413,895 17.19 Pasadena $127,484,429 6.26 Pomona $53,348,340 12.83 Rosemead $9,894,486 18.49 San Dimas $8,408,394 16.43 San Gabriel $12,111,033 15.05 San Marino $5,686,000 20.89 Sierra Madre $4,613,443 14.30 South El Monte $7,200,000 10.25 South Pasadena $10,050,470 18.02 Temple City $4,900,000 22.28 Walnut $5,400,000 20.41 West Covina $31,140,040 14.58