NEWS ANALYSIS : L.A. County Lacked Clout to Avoid State Funding Cut : Politics: Supervisors had no influential friends on a key panel. Poor showing is far cry from earlier successes.

Despite its large delegation and powerful political pull, Los Angeles County has been outmaneuvered in the fight for scarce state tax dollars in this year’s budget battle.

The result stands to be harsh. In the fiscal year starting July 1, Los Angeles County will lose $299 million in local property tax revenue, about half of what will be taken from all 58 counties, revised estimates showed Wednesday.

The proposed cuts have left county supervisors clamoring for political revenge. Board of Supervisors Chairman Ed Edelman fumed Wednesday that he might endorse a movement to split the state into three because of the county’s ill treatment.

This year’s loss for the county is a far cry from the days when Los Angeles legislators used brute political force to tap into state coffers at the expense of other counties in the state. More than a quarter of the Senate’s and Assembly’s members represent portions of Los Angeles County.

But this year, say numerous state lawmakers and lobbyists, Los Angeles County lost big for several reasons: The county did a poor job of lobbying and was not armed with workable alternatives to the cuts, and it did not have a Democratic lawmaker representing the county on the Legislature’s key budget conference committee.

Many also said that Los Angeles County simply had a weak case to make, at least from the point of view of those representing other parts of the state. In 1979, county lobbyists won big when legislators decided how to bail out local government in the wake of tax-cutting Proposition 13. Los Angeles County received a disproportionate share of the bailout.

Now lawmakers from outside Los Angeles were more than willing to take that away from the state’s most populous county.

In Sacramento, Los Angeles-area lawmakers are still trying to come up with new sources of revenue for the county. Supervisors Gloria Molina and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, meanwhile, arrived in Sacramento on Wednesday to join in a last-ditch effort to derail the budget deal.

But some lawmakers also were frustrated with top county officials and openly groused that their hometown counterparts were ill-prepared to confront the state budget dilemma.

“The county is used to getting its way without regard to merit,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “So what you’re hearing is a lot of whining because they were not doing their job.”

It’s not as if county officials were absent from Sacramento. The sheriff’s and district attorney’s offices may emerge relatively intact, in part a testament to successful lobbying by law enforcement officials around the state.

The Board of Supervisors also did its share of lobbying. The board met privately with Gov. Pete Wilson early in the month, and Los Angeles County executives proposed a multiyear budget system.

But the meeting with Wilson may have done more harm than good because the board members complained about their plight while offering little in the way of solution, Wilson aides say. And the supervisors stuck with the multiyear budget idea long after it was clear that it lacked support in the Capitol.

Lawmakers said that when Edelman led a Sunday night delegation to Sacramento in an effort to derail the budget, he should have had alternatives for softening the blow.

“I didn’t need the county to tell me that this was a very substantial hit,” said Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood). “What I needed was the county to tell me how to mitigate it. They were incapable of doing that.”

Altogether, counties across the state will lose $1.99 billion in property tax revenue in the next fiscal year, and cities will lose $228 million. That loss will be blunted somewhat by plans to extend a half-cent sales tax surcharge for the remainder of the year, making the net loss to counties $592 million.

“We thought it was dead,” Edelman said of the plan to take such a big bite from the counties. “The Senate voted it down the week before.”

Edelman’s assumption that the property tax shift was dead suggested that county officials were confused about the ways of Sacramento. The Senate vote on the property tax shift was purely symbolic and had no bearing on the final budget negotiations and votes.

Edelman disputed the claim that the county failed to provide alternatives. Among the alternatives he offered--and said was rejected--was one to allow the county to levy a business license fee or utility tax. He said that state lawmakers should have been watching out for the home county.

“The deal was cut by the time we got up there,” he said.

If, as Edelman charges, state lawmakers let down the county, one reason may be that Los Angeles had no Democratic representatives on the powerful Senate-Assembly conference committee on the budget. The only one of the six members that hails from Southern California, Paul Horcher, is a Diamond Bar Republican on the Democrat-controlled committee. Horcher also is a maverick within in his own party. The other five committee members were Northern Californians.

There has not been a Los Angeles Assembly Democrat on the powerful committee since 1990, when Maxine Waters left for Congress. Alan Robbins was the last Senate Democrat from Los Angeles to serve on the committee, but he resigned in 1991 after being indicted on corruption charges.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), an architect of the budget, described the budget as being “very fair to Los Angeles and very fair to the other 57 counties.”

Noting that Los Angeles County was the biggest beneficiary of Proposition 13 bailout funding, Brown said, it follows that “when it comes time to reduce those subsidies . . . they’re going to be the largest contributor to that process.”

“What Los Angels County would like to do,” Brown said, “is to continue to receive and have everybody else donate. You can’t do that in a real democracy.”

Added to the mix, lawmakers from outside Los Angeles were more than willing to take away from the state’s most populous county.

“L.A. is the biggest target to hit,” said Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles). “People always look to L.A., not recognizing we have the most people to serve, the most services to provide. The need is greatest there.”

In many ways, the county’s interests also conflicted with cities in Los Angeles County.

City officials made the case that they have raised taxes and fees as high as they can, and Katz said he placed the highest priority on providing enough money for increasing the number of police.

The city of Los Angeles fared relatively well, losing about $24 million, Katz said. That sum is large, but far less than the $70 million that was being proposed as late as last Friday.

Times staff writer Frederick M. Muir contributed to this story.