Anti-Gang Agency May Lose County Funds : Budgets: Hope in Youth plans to lay off half its staff unless supervisors provide a $1.9-million extension. Some officials have expressed disappointment in the group’s performance, citing a lack of community visibility.

Hope in Youth, the year-old organization whose unprecedented fund-raising muscle helped create the largest anti-gang program in Los Angeles County, is in danger of losing a key government backer, potentially forcing it to disband a substantial part of its effort early next year.

The organization says it will lay off about half of its 120-member field staff if the County Board of Supervisors does not act soon to extend its funding.

But the board--citing an uncertain budget picture--appears to be in no mood to spend $1.9 million to keep the program intact through June.

The troublesome financial picture casts a shadow on Hope in Youth’s five-year goal: an unprecedented infusion of nearly 500 social workers into the county’s more desperate neighborhoods, where they would concentrate on troubled young people who had not joined gangs.

Hope in Youth’s organizers, who have gone as far as Washington to get their group included in this year’s federal crime bill, are not expected to give up easily. In past funding fights they have packed government hearing rooms with cheering supporters and have had Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other religious leaders lobby politicians.

The organization’s director, Greg Fitzgerald, said he is baffled as to why the county might cease funding the program just as it is making a positive impression on hundreds of youths.

“This is something the county ought to be proud of, and I just don’t understand why they are not,” Fitzgerald said.

Hope in Youth was designed by three neighborhood organizations and 10 religious denominations, gaining much of its initial impetus from Mahony, who said that government had taken a fragmented approach to gang intervention.

In five years, the program is supposed to disband, leaving behind community groups and new leaders who will help steer teen-agers away from trouble, without more government intervention.

The church-backed program had to lobby hard from the start with government leaders who pleaded poverty. Its contract with the county conceded that the $2.9 million it was given last year was a “one-time-only obligation.”

Several county officials say they see no reason now to offer more money to a group that has already far outstripped funding offered to more experienced agencies.

“We just haven’t seen them out there in the community. We don’t know what they are doing,” said Robert Alaniz, a spokesman for Supervisor Gloria Molina, one of the program’s chief backers a year ago. “The supervisor is very disappointed with the work they have done to date. She would be very hard-pressed at this point to support another year of funding.”

None of the other four supervisors have yet offered to even bring the Hope in Youth funding request forward for discussion. “Until the budget situation gets straightened out, we don’t know where we stand,” said Supervisor Deane Dana. “There is no way the board can vote money with the situation the way it is now.”

But if Hope in Youth has made a reputation for anything, it is as a formidable political force on the local, state and national levels. Over the objections of outgoing Mayor Tom Bradley, it got start-up funding from the Los Angeles City Council and a $2.5-million grant from the new city government headed by Mayor Richard Riordan. It secured the even-larger grant from the county and $2 million from the state. Its $7.4-million budget dwarfs the $4 million-plus annual budget of Community Youth Gang Services, previously the largest anti-gang agency in the field.

The infusion of funds for a group without a track record angered leaders of some longtime anti-gang organizations, who said they had to struggle each year to obtain a relative pittance from government.

But Hope in Youth argues that only its more comprehensive network, bolstered by support from religious denominations, could begin to counteract the forces that have sent about 100,000 of the county’s youngsters into gangs.

So far, the program has fielded 40 teams of three social workers. In each team, one worker focuses on direct contact with “at-risk” youths in the community, another works with parents and the third organizes programs at schools.

At Pacoima’s Haddon Elementary School, the school organizer now has parents staffing an after-school playground period until 6 p.m. to keep youngsters off the streets. Elsewhere, about 1,000 adults are involved in weekly classes to learn how to be better parents. About 900 children and teen-agers in the program are working on community cleanups, job readiness classes and other projects, Hope in Youth officials say.

Hope in Youth hit a few glitches in its start-up, including hiring some counselor-social workers who were not qualified, according to two employees of a firm that is reviewing the organization’s performance for the funding agencies. But the agency’s overall start-up has been slightly better than average, particularly considering that it is larger than any project of its kind anywhere in the nation, said Sally Bolus, vice president of the Evaluation and Training Institute.

Bolus said early intervention plans offer “a promising strategy, and we have seen some promising signs. But we can’t say at this point how effective it’s going to be.”

The county’s money has paid for about 60 of the program’s 120 field staff and another six office employees--all of whom will receive layoff notices by Christmas if the supervisors do not extend funding, Fitzgerald said.