Clinton Budget Does Not Include Funds for Santa Monicas : Parklands: The proposed spending plan contains no money for National Park Service land acquisitions in the state. Area officials call the news disappointing.

The Clinton administration has included no funds in its proposed budget for fiscal 1994 to buy parkland for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which enjoyed substantial federal funding for the past four years.

The Administration’s proposed budget, made public Thursday, contains no funding for National Park Service land acquisitions in California.

“This is not something I’m happy about,” said Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), a longtime champion of local Park Service purchases. But he added that he was not particularly worried, because money left out of Presidents’ budgets are often added by Congress in later committee sessions.

Beilenson said he was extremely pleased that the budget proposal calls for $110 million for Metro Rail--enough money to allow construction on the mammoth mass transit system to extend into the San Fernando Valley next year.

No other new transit system in the country received nearly as much money.

Other federally funded Valley projects--such as restoration of the Los Angeles River at the Sepulveda Basin and the Hansen Dam restoration project--were excluded from the President’s 1994 budget. Generally, though, items such as these are put into the congressional budget as it grinds through Capitol Hill.

The Administration, in response to concern that the Park Service cannot maintain all the land it acquires, proposed shifting the division’s funds next year, decreasing acquisition funding by a third while increasing the operating budget to $2 billion, an increase of $188.3 million over 1993.

The Bush Administration budgeted $84.4 million for Park Service land acquisitions in fiscal year 1993, and Congress actually spent $90.5 million. For 1994, Clinton has asked for $49.5 million for the same item.

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area usually receives between $12 million and $15 million in acquisition money from Congress.

David Gackenbach, recreation area superintendent, called the news on the acquisition funding “disappointing.

“This is absolutely a critical time to buy, because the prices are down,” he said.

Gackenbach warned that if Congress does not appropriate money for the Santa Monicas, some valuable land could be lost to development. “If someone has to sell, they have to sell. They can’t wait for another budgeting cycle,” he said.