Sheriff Says Sales Tax Will Carry Department : Budget: He says extending the state’s half-cent levy for six months will provide full funding. Plans for layoffs and cutbacks suspended.

Striking a more optimistic note about his department’s budget prospects than he has in months, Sheriff Sherman Block said Wednesday that he expects a six-month extension of a half-cent increase in the state sales tax to provide full funding for his force for the next fiscal year.

Block told a news conference that he has suspended all plans for laying off personnel and closing jail facilities, pending final budgetary action by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

He said that by his calculations, legislative action in Sacramento will give public safety agencies in Los Angeles County, specifically the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office, up to an additional $207 million--their projected total shortfall prior to the Sacramento budget deal had amounted to about $140 million. This means some of the money can go to other agencies, he said.

And, Block said, if the state’s voters in a special state election Nov. 2 approve a permanent half-cent sales tax extension, which would be dedicated to law enforcement, there will be a windfall of up to $250 million that could be used to staff two new jails and provide other law enforcement services.

“I believe that public safety (agencies) throughout this state will very aggressively campaign for this sales tax measure in November,” the sheriff said, “and I believe that all indications are that people will be very supportive as long as that money is earmarked in an area that they’re concerned about, which is public safety.”

Two months ago Block was talking about taking a cutback of up to $152 million and laying off up to 1,700 of his 7,300 deputies, as well as releasing 5,000 of the county’s 21,000 jail inmates. Without cutbacks, the portion of the Sheriff’s Department budget coming from the county and state was about $700 million, but hundreds of millions of dollars more come directly from cities that contract for sheriff’s services.

Lobbying efforts by Block and other sheriffs, as well as by fire officials and district attorneys, helped persuade Gov. Pete Wilson to drop his call for letting the half-cent sales tax increase lapse. Wilson hammered out a plan with legislators under which revenues from the half-cent tax would be dedicated exclusively to public safety funding.

Some critics have suggested that the warnings of Block and other law enforcement officials, and a nationally publicized action of the San Joaquin County district attorney in halting misdemeanor prosecutions, amounted to successful gamesmanship that induced the governor to back down.

Block always stoutly denied playing games. But once he actually closed the Mira Loma jail facility in the Antelope Valley and, with much publicity of his own, released 50 women prisoners early from the Sybil Brand Institute in East Los Angeles, it took only a few days for the Board of Supervisors to provide him with a month’s emergency funds that reopened Mira Loma and put prisoners’ releases on hold.

Block remained cautious about some aspects of his budget. He said it would take $7 million in start-up costs, and then $11 million a year thereafter, to implement all the reform recommendations he has agreed to from last year’s report by special counsel James Kolts.