Supervisors Vow Reprisals for State Budget Cutbacks : Government: County officials will scrap cooperative programs, such as beach lifeguards, and refuse to release some tax funds to Sacramento.

Wounded after a bruising budget battle with the Legislature, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors said Tuesday that it will eliminate cooperative programs with the state and will refuse to forward a disputed share of property taxes to Sacramento.

The supervisors also urged voters to deny reelection to legislators who supported the controversial state spending plan.

“We should look at all ways possible to stick it to Sacramento,” Supervisor Gloria Molina said.

The supervisors threw down the gauntlet as they tentatively approved a county budget that board Chairman Ed Edelman said would “decimate county government as we know it today.”

The board voted to put the state on notice that after its current contract runs out next year, the county will no longer supply lifeguards at state beaches. The county loses $5 million annually by providing the service.

On a motion by Molina, the board ordered all other county departments to audit their operations and to report in a week on other programs or services that the county provides to the state at a loss.

Edelman said that although the county “lost the legislative battle, there are other battles to fight.” He said the county will refuse to forward to the state hundreds of millions of dollars in disputed property tax revenues--a maneuver that will have to be ruled upon in the courts.

Under the state budget that is awaiting the governor’s signature, $2.6 billion in property tax revenues will be shifted from local governments to education.

“We have to fight this down the line,” said Supervisor Deane Dana, noting that under the allocation formula adopted by the Legislature, Los Angeles County will suffer a disproportionately large share of the tax revenue cuts.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich said Los Angeles-area Assembly and Senate members who supported the state budget and the tax-revenue shift should be held accountable in 1994 elections. “There was no excuse for people to have voted that way,” Antonovich said.

County analysts said the county’s budget gap is at least $273 million and could run as high as $473 million if county voters do not approve extension of a half-cent sales tax scheduled to expire Dec. 31.

As they mapped their continuing fight with Sacramento, the supervisors also began taking steps to deal with the reality of the county’s $12.3-billion budget plan for fiscal year 1993-1994.

The supervisors voted unanimously to ask 25 senior county executives to voluntarily forgo an automatic cost-of-living raise to help close the budget gap. The move could save about $100,000.

“I will be very curious to see who turns us down,” Molina said, adding that she expects to see 100% participation by the county’s department heads.

Molina said that she is anticipating that board members and other elected officials will voluntarily take an 8.25% pay cut as a way of sharing the pain of the budget reductions.

The county budget plan already assumes $215 million in salary cuts for the county’s 80,000 employees.

The proposed county spending plan will be deliberated in a series of community hearings around the county and later before the board. Hearings are scheduled to begin July 12, and a final budget should be adopted in August, said Gerald Roos, county budget analyst.

The county budget plan would force closure of at least one county hospital, four jails, eight sheriff’s stations and 23 parks, and the layoff of 9,500 employees. Ten libraries would be closed, and hours at remaining libraries would be cut in half. Other cutbacks would affect virtually every other county service.

Despite the grim outlook, some officials held out hope for some relief from the state as legislators mop up after the budget frenzy.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said a proposed urban aid package could bring as much as $50 million in new state money to the county as legislators try to mitigate the effect of the property tax shift on county operations.

The Legislature is also considering changes in how some sales tax revenues will be allocated and measures that would give the county increased authority to levy new and expanded taxes of its own. For instance, the county has asked for the right to impose a countywide business license fee.