Pleas Made to Protect Shares of County Pie : Budget: Advocates for an array of services crowd a Board of Supervisors meeting to try to keep their funding from being slashed as Los Angeles County faces its worst fiscal crisis.

An array of groups that depend on Los Angeles County government for public services descended upon the Hall of Administration to plead their cases Tuesday, each hoping to protect its small chunk of the county’s $13-billion budget.

Library patrons and welfare clients, mental health advocates and crime victims, doctors and social workers filled the board’s downtown hearing room. Sheriff Sherman Block and Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner also addressed the supervisors.

“We are in the most unpleasant position I’ve seen in my 34 years,” said Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon as the budget deliberations began. “This is a very painful process. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to make these cuts.”

County government faces a $588-million shortfall, the worst fiscal crisis in Los Angeles County history. The board took little action Tuesday to resolve the budget crisis, postponing the most difficult decisions until next week.

Last week, Dixon submitted a revised budget that would eliminate 4,200 county jobs. His recommendations included closure of six sheriff’s facilities and 12 public libraries and deep reductions in the Department of Public Social Services and the district attorney’s office.

Sharp reductions are also proposed for parks and recreation programs, county museums and the health department, where 1,600 positions would be eliminated and service hours would be cut at most outpatient clinics.

Public health officials said Los Angeles County hospitals could decline to Third World conditions. Dr. Reed V. Tuckson, president of the medical school at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, talked about what a proposed $7.96-million cut would do to outpatient services at the hospital.

“People will die as a result of these cuts--poor people, blacks, Hispanics, people who are too often forgotten,” Tuckson said, adding that the facility already is inadequately staffed. “I implore you to put life over death, to put survival over other political expediencies.”

Block, Reiner and a host of suburban police chiefs and other law enforcement officials said sharp reductions will be devastating in the criminal justice system.

“The crooks won’t be in jail, and the people won’t be safe,” said Shaun Mathers, president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, a labor organization. “Do you want cops on the street or crooks?”

Under Dixon’s proposal, two jail facilities would be closed, 500 positions eliminated in the Sheriff’s Department and another 170 jobs eliminated in the district attorney’s office.

So deep are the proposed cuts in the criminal justice system that Block and Reiner drew worst-case scenarios of courtrooms without prosecutors and sheriff’s stations without deputies.

Dixon speculated that the number of cases referred to the district attorney’s office might decrease--with millions of dollars saved--simply because there would be fewer sheriff’s deputies and thus fewer criminals arrested.

“That’s a hell of a thing to be talking about,” Reiner responded, “to limit the arrests on the street to cut back workloads.”

Block said that his first priority would be to keep open six sheriff’s facilities that would be cut under the proposed budget.

After Reiner and Block finished their presentations, the board heard from Robert Leach, president of Justice for Homicide Victims Inc., who spoke against cuts in the criminal justice system.

“To cut the number of sheriffs and to cut the D.A.’s office is the worst thing the supervisors can do,” said Leach, whose 21-year-old daughter was murdered in 1983. “Life is endangered when public safety is cut.”

Board members said that they would do everything possible to ensure public safety but that cuts are unavoidable.

“Just to say ‘Don’t cut law enforcement’ doesn’t help us,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman. “Do we take it out of mental health? Do we take it out of public health or out of welfare services so that we have riots when people aren’t attended to?” Under Dixon’s proposed budget, the welfare department would be hit hard, with monthly checks issued to 90,000 General Relief recipients reduced from $341 to $299.

Among those in the audience Tuesday was Anthony Greene, 32, a General Relief recipient and Skid Row resident. Greene said he spends most of his check on rent and already has trouble making ends meet.

“That leaves me $97 to live on, and most of that goes to doctor bills,” he said.

The proposed budget also calls for elimination of an eighth of the welfare department’s work force. Tyto Hernandez-Crocker, a county social worker who handles General Relief cases, said he discovered recently that his job might be eliminated.

“If I get laid off, I’m going to go back into the General Relief system as a client, asking for food stamps,” he said. “I’ve had very sleepless nights over the last few days.”

Sitting a few rows down from Hernandez-Crocker in the hearing room were dozens of mental health clients and advocates who wore red armbands to protest a recommended cut of about $8 million in the Department of Mental Health’s budget.

“It will put more people on the streets, result in acute hospitalization at higher cost to the public and put more people in jail,” said David Pilon of the Mental Health Assn., an advocacy group.

During about five hours of budget deliberations, the supervisors presented few options to avoid the drastic cuts in social services. They already have won important concessions from county unions--including an agreement on an early retirement program.

The meeting began with an extended debate between Supervisor Michael Antonovich and Supervisor Gloria Molina over the origins of the county’s fiscal crisis.

Antonovich blamed much of the crisis on the costs incurred by illegal immigration, saying that the county spends more than $500 million each year providing services to illegal immigrants.

“Illegal immigration is bankrupting the county and state of California,” Antonovich said. Molina responded with an angry denunciation of the savings and loan scandal, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and the Bush Administration’s failure to address urban problems.

“I don’t see anyone (in the Bush Administration) stepping forward to say how we should take care of the needs of the working poor.”

The board later discussed a motion by Supervisor Kenneth Hahn asking that the Legislature go into special session to give the county authority to raise additional revenue through new taxes. No vote was taken.

In their only revenue-raising action Tuesday, supervisors voted to increase fees at county-run golf courses by $3 per adult and $1.50 for senior citizens. The increase will become effective Oct. 1.

The board also discussed briefly a proposal to create a new countywide sales tax. Dixon said it remained unclear whether the county has authority to create such a tax.