Fund Proposal Angers Garcetti : Finances: County official urges $23 million of surplus funds for leaky library roofs and $3 million on district’s attorney’s staff. D.A. says he needs to hire more investigators and prosecutors.

Los Angeles County’s chief administrative officer recommended Monday that the Board of Supervisors spend about $23 million of a $40-million surplus to patch some leaky library roofs and maintain public safety.

The recommendations, to be considered by the board today, angered Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who had requested about $10 million to make it through the rest of the fiscal year, but received only $3 million. He said he needed the money in part to replace 145 staff members, including 40 investigators and 85 prosecutors.

“We can’t protect the community if they keep pushing us into unnecessary plea-bargains with career criminals,” Garcetti said Monday. “We’re losing cases in Compton right now because we don’t have enough investigators to find witnesses.”

But in a plan supported Monday by the majority of the board, Chief Administrative Officer Sally R. Reed urged that $17 million of the surplus be left untouched in light of the county’s worsening fiscal situation, which could result in a $33.1-million shortfall this year.

“We have to hang onto that $17 million for dear life,” Reed said. “There will be other emergencies, I’m sure.”

Even Supervisor Mike Antonovich, one of the board’s staunchest supporters of funding for law enforcement, sides with Reed in holding the line on expenditures for prosecutors, a spokesman said.

“Mike wants to get as many prosecutors as possible, but he thinks Gil could more effectively use his prosecutors by reassigning some of them from community outreach programs into the courtroom,” Antonovich spokesman Dawson Oppenheimer said.

Under Reed’s plan, the largest chunk of the surplus fund--$12.5 million--would go to the Sheriff’s Department, largely to pay deputies for overtime that cannot be deferred under federal law. The public defender would receive $5.9 million and the district attorney $3 million.

Reed’s proposal leaves the county’s crippled public library system, which saw $30 million slashed from its budget in July, with only enough funds to repair eight of 17 leaky roofs and no money for new books.

Reed also recommended that the board consider in March whether to help general relief recipients, whose monthly grants were cut from $293 to $212.