Anti-Gang Agency Given $2.5 Million : Budget: City Council fails to override Riordan veto, guaranteeing funding for fledgling Hope in Youth organization.

The upstart Hope in Youth anti-gang organization won a $2.5-million appropriation Tuesday from the Los Angeles City Council, which rejected demands that the fledgling organization be forced to compete for funds with more experienced social service agencies.

The council failed by three votes to override a budget veto by Mayor Richard Riordan that guaranteed Hope in Youth funding, while leaving other groups that work with young people to fight for a portion of another $2.5-million appropriation.

Debate over Hope in Youth created a rancorous final chapter in the city’s budget debate, with opposing camps packing the council chamber and jeering one another.

The vote in favor of the church-based anti-gang program--whose backers come from 10 religious denominations and include Cardinal Roger M. Mahony--was the lone victory for Riordan during a four-hour budget debate.

On 11 other votes, the City Council mustered the two-thirds majority required to override mayoral vetoes.

In its veto overrides, the council:

* Expanded hours or services at parks and libraries.

* Added an extra street-sweeping crew to clean an extra 100 “curb-miles” of streets.

* Expanded the number of animal control officers by 10.

* Raised spending to recruit more women police officers.

* Approved funds to speed preparation of environmental impact reports.

The council also voted to arm City Hall security officers with pistols and added two artist-calligraphers to make commendations and plaques at the behest of council members.

Riordan had used his veto last week to pare back most of those programs and to eliminate a few. His aides on Tuesday reiterated his concern that the council overrides leave the city with an inadequate reserve of $9 million.

“It’s easier to put things back in (the budget) if you don’t find the revenue to pay for them,” said Bill McCarley, the mayor’s chief of staff. “The council has said, ‘We will take the risk that the reserve fund will be adequate.’ ”

But council members argued that the added programs were significant enough to risk a relatively small reduction in the reserve fund. “These programs are in areas that people will actually notice in their lives,” Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said.

The most heated debate of the budget session revolved around Hope in Youth, an echo of the controversy that has surrounded the group since it leaped to prominence a year ago by winning a total of more than $5 million from the city and county.

Riordan had fulfilled a pledge from his campaign when he included an unusual $5-million line item in his budget for the program, doubling the funding the city had provided a year earlier. But the City Council amended the budget to force Hope in Youth to compete for the funds, along with other youth service agencies. Riordan, in turn, vetoed the council action and proposed a $2.5-million guarantee for Hope in Youth and a competition for the remaining $2.5 million.

That set the stage for Tuesday’s contest, in which several other community activists complained about what they said is favoritism for Hope in Youth. The vote was eight in favor of funding the agency and seven against.

Chilton Alphonse, who has been running an anti-gang program on Crenshaw Boulevard since 1985, said he is threatened with closure after the loss of $25,000 in funding from the county and $100,000 from the city during the past year.

“I’ve been struggling for years to keep my doors open,” said Alphonse, who heads the Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation. “Then one group with no history of effectiveness gets all this money, without letting other groups compete for it. . . . That just doesn’t seem fair.”

T.J. Bottoms, pastor of All Peoples Christian Church, said his church and youth center has been serving the community for 42 years.

“I think Hope in Youth is a good idea and has outstanding potential,” Bottoms said. “But institutions that have been around as long as us, who have weathered all the storms, are being ignored.”

Rudolph (Rockhead) Johnson, a former Compton Crips gang member and now coordinator with the Amer-I-Can anti-gang program, added: “One group shouldn’t automatically be given the biggest piece of the pie.”

But Hope in Youth organizers argued that the $5 million designated for anti-gang programs never would have existed if they had not launched their campaign for public funding.

“This is $5 million that was not there before,” said the Rev. William R. Johnson, pastor of Curry Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Compton. “And the $2.5 million available to other organizations is $2.5 million that wasn’t there before. This is new funding.”

Louis Negrete, a chairman of Hope in Youth and a Chicano studies professor at Cal State L.A. said the new organization is the only one with a plan large enough to deal with mushrooming gang membership. “For years the gang violence has been getting worse and worse,” Negrete said. “Whatever was being done in the past obviously wasn’t enough. Something new was needed.”

The antipathy in the debate was heightened by events in the week leading up to the vote.

Flyers from one of the community organizations supporting Hope in Youth--the Southern California Organizing Committee--lashed out at Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas for his opposition to the program. One described Ridley-Thomas as supporting “anti-Catholic, anti-white and anti-Latino” views. A church bulletin at one parish said that Ridley-Thomas had insulted “the church and the Pope.”

Fellow lawmakers defended the South-Central Los Angeles councilman, who is black. Councilwoman Rita Walters called the flyers “character assassination.” Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said they were blasphemous. And Councilwoman Ruth Galanter accused Hope in Youth supporters of smear tactics and intimidation--noting that hundreds of backers of the organization had threatened to picket Ridley-Thomas’s home.

That demonstration, however, was called off when Ridley-Thomas staged a rally of his own on his front lawn an hour before the Hope in Youth demonstration was to begin. The councilman had gathered twice as many people as the Hope in Youth supporters.

Voting for the special appropriation for Hope in Youth were council members Richard Alarcon, Richard Alatorre, Mike Hernandez, John Ferraro, Hal Bernson, Rudy Svorinich Jr., Joel Wachs and Yaroslavsky. Voting against were council members Laura Chick, Nate Holden, Marvin Braude, Galanter, Ridley-Thomas, Walters and Goldberg.