Cities Predicting Big Reduction in Services if State Siphons Off Aid : Government: Legislators may strip more than $90 million from funds to 26 Southeast area cities. Some Officials are frightened.

Proposals by state lawmakers to balance California’s budget by taking millions of dollars from local governments have Southeast-area officials angry, frustrated and more than a little bit frightened.

With the state billions of dollars in the hole, legislators are considering siphoning off $1 billion to $2 billion from funds normally given to cities.

No decisions have been made, but just the possibility of such cuts has local leaders panicking. Police and fire departments would be gutted, they said. Public safety would be threatened. Parks and recreation programs would be wiped out. Social and health services to the poor and elderly would become generous gestures of the past.

If the cuts are approved, the state would take more than $90 million from 26 Southeast-area cities, according to a list compiled by the League of California Cities.

“This is the equivalent of a death march for cities,” Long Beach Vice Mayor Jeffrey A. Kellogg said. “We are all sitting around here wondering which poison pill is going to be ours to swallow.”

Lakewood spokesman Don Waldie, who has spent the past week in somber discussions with people statewide, is equally grim.

“A $1-billion cut would break our bones,” he said. “If they cut $2 billion, they may as well call the coroner to take us away.”

State lawmakers are mulling numerous options to salvage the budget in what Long Beach City Manager James C. Hankla called a “crazy quilt, musical chairs way of funding.” Perhaps the most widely discussed proposals--and the ones that alarm local officials the most--would strip cities of two major sources of funding.

The first is the city’s share of the fee that drivers pay when they register their cars. In many Southeast-area cities, the vehicle license fee is the backbone of the budget, typically the second-largest source of revenue after sales taxes.

The second item state lawmakers are considering would be a transfer of property taxes from cities to schools, a shift that would be a boon to struggling school districts, but a hardship for many Southeast-area cities still in the depths of recession.

Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), who represents several Southeast cities, said she understands the consequences such cuts will have on cities, but “I just don’t see a way out of it.”

“Everyone is going to take a hit,” she said. “The main question is what form will it take.”

She said the lawmakers are not trying to save pet projects. “These are life-and-death issues. . . . We realize what cities may face, but we must weigh that against food for kids, health care for the sick.”

Roybal-Allard emphasized that all kinds of proposals are floating around the Capitol, and said the only thing Democrats have decided is that they must protect education from budget cuts. Everyone else, she said, “must share the pain.”

The Legislature was supposed to pass its budget Monday, but with the debate still raging over what will be cut, state and local officials say the spending plan may not be ready to present to the governor until early next week.

In the meantime, Southeast-area leaders have crisscrossed the skies between here and Sacramento in an extraordinary effort to convince lawmakers that cities cannot afford the sacrifice.

The Long Beach City Council, which is already facing $8.3 million in cuts recommended by the city manager, estimated in a tense budget hearing Tuesday that the proposals could force the City Council to cut an additional $30 million from its $1.6-billion budget.

City Manager Hankla said he expects to lose between $7.5 million and $30 million to the state, depending on what legislators decide to cut.

If the state cuts less than $7.5 million from the city’s budget, Long Beach officials could trim money from 18 departments without taking money from public safety departments. Still, such cuts would devastate library services, the parks and recreation department and the planning and building department, Hankla said.

If the state cuts more than $7.5 million, city officials would be forced to take money from the police and fire departments as well as paramedics, he said.

“We have every reason to be scared,” said Councilman Thomas Clark, who met with legislators in Sacramento on Monday. “Everybody in this city better realize we’re facing some serious cuts.”

Officials in other Southeast-area cities agreed that the proposed cuts would mean cutbacks in everything from holiday decorations and pothole repairs to police and fire services.

And as one angry city administrator put it: “If the cuts are shoved down our throats,” many city councils would have little choice but to raise taxes--a grim prospect in this part of the county where many residents live in poverty.

Both the Lakewood and Huntington Park city councils are considering imposing utility taxes on electric, gas, telephone, water and cable television bills. The City of Commerce, which could lose $1 million of its $28-million budget, is considering a hotel tax. Bellflower officials are contemplating not only a utility user’s tax but the quadrupling of their business license fee to make up for what could be a $2.8-million loss, City Manager Jack A. Simpson said.

Community correspondents Emily Adams, Kirsten Lee Swartz and Suzan Schill contributed to this story.