Report Questions School District’s Deficit Figure : Education: State analysis requested by Roberti says L.A. administration can’t substantiate $73 million of budget shortfall. But district officials blast the study as ‘slipshod.’

State Senate leader David A. Roberti, who has vowed to break up the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District, opened his political offensive Wednesday by releasing a hastily written state report that claims the district cannot account for nearly 20% of its $400-million budget deficit.

School officials immediately blasted the report as “slipshod” and misleading. Others said Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who plans to introduce legislation in February to split up the nation’s second-largest school system, was using the nine-page document as “propaganda” to advance his cause.

The report, prepared by the state legislative analyst’s office at Roberti’s behest, blamed the district’s deficit on spending more money than it had available during the past four years but noted that recent budget cuts “will result in long-run savings.”

The report also contained a paragraph saying the district had failed to fully substantiate$73 million of its estimated $400-million budget shortfall--a finding that Roberti seized on at a morning news conference in his office attended by reporters and several visibly angry district officials.

“The district is asking the teachers, students and support staff to bear a burden that it cannot even define. The district must come forward with the details of its fiscal condition,” Roberti said.

Outside the lawmaker’s Van Nuys office, Los Angeles school district Supt. Sid Thompson called the state document incomplete but promised to work through the holidays to produce a full accounting of the budget deficit by the middle of next week. Officials in the legislative analyst’s office acknowledged that, given more time, the district probably would have been able to account for the $73 million.

The district’s budget director, Henry Jones, speculated that the amount probably represents a drop in lottery revenues and a misinterpretation by the analyst’s office of pay cuts imposed by the district last year.

Earlier this year the district said it needed to cut $400 million from its more than $4-billion budget. The majority of the shortfall was made up by cutting the pay of the district’s 58,000 employees, which led teachers to authorize a strike in February.

“Our budget is balanced,” said Thompson, flanked by outgoing Chief Financial Officer Robert Booker and other high-ranking district officials. “The $73 million can be itemized and will be itemized.”

The superintendent continued: “The fact that I sat in the press conference and that 50% to 60% of that conference was related to breaking up the school district makes me think that really was what this was all built around.”

Roberti, the powerful Senate president pro tem, announced his support for breaking up the school district this summer after winning election to a new seat representing Van Nuys and other areas of southern San Fernando Valley. The Valley has long been a hotbed of discontent over public schools.

School board member Jeff Horton, who also attended the news conference, said the district’s budget had been thoroughly reviewed by county education officials, a private auditing firm and a commission headed by former state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp.

“None of them have found any $73 million,” Horton said, “and they did a more intensive study than the legislative analyst.”

The report was requested by Roberti in a Nov. 6 letter to Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill and was released Wednesday. Analysts from the nonpartisan agency visited the school district in mid-November as part of a routine fact-finding trip and followed up with letters and telephone calls.

Los Angeles district officials insisted they did not know the report was being written and said its findings were based on incomplete information gathered as district offices were preparing to close for the winter break. The term ended for most students on Dec. 18, and staff members say they told state analysts that day they could not provide further information until they returned in two weeks.

Jones, the district’s budget director, said the legislative analyst’s effort was like a “college student trying to do a book report on the back of a napkin.”

But Bob Loessberg-Zahl, who authored the state report, said the district had had two weeks to furnish all relevant information and that Roberti was eager to have the report completed before January, when the new legislative session begins.

“We were under time constraints to release the report,” Loessberg-Zahl said. But “I’m surprised they didn’t have something readily available to show where that $400 million came from since that’s a number they’ve been using for months.”

However, he added that “it’s probably true” the district could have accounted for the $73 million in “unspecified cost increases” if it had more time.

Roberti denied pressuring the legislative analyst’s office to hurry up the report. But it comes as Roberti and other lawmakers are debating whether to reduce or even eliminate funding for the agency, which has been long respected for its independence from political considerations.

“The legislative analyst office needs to justify their existence and get funding for next year,” school board member Roberta Weintraub said. “This report was done in such a slipshod manner.”

At his news conference, Roberti insisted no “ideological or political purposes” motivated his request for the report. But in a later telephone interview, he acknowledged asking for the report in the hope it would bolster his argument that the district should be carved up.

Virgil Roberts, a board member of LEARN, a coalition of community and business groups devoted to overhauling Los Angeles public schools, accused Roberti of a “propaganda ploy.”

“Roberti has been a public official for a long time. We’ve had problems in public education for a long time. It’s only been in the last year that he’s expressed any interest at all,” Roberts said, suggesting the lawmaker is interested in running for Congress or other higher office.

Roberti denied that calling the unsubstantiated deficit “a black hole” in the district’s budgeting process was an overstatement. He said school officials should have budget data “on the tip of the tongue” at all times and should have been able to instantly describe their budget deficit to state analysts.

“We’re not talking about some rarefied line item,” he said. “We’re talking about a huge chunk of their budget. . . . There’s no excuse for not having a ready explanation for that.”

Helen Bernstein, president of the Los Angeles teachers union, agreed. “The point is, they must know where this money is if they’re going to take 12% out of employees’ pockets,” Bernstein said.

Times education writer Stephanie Chavez contributed to this story.