County, Cities Told to Pay More for Schools : Finances: State seeks more than $85 million, citing a miscalculation of taxes owed. Local officials scramble to adjust their budgets accordingly.

It was bad enough for counties and cities when the state squeezed them like so many tubes of toothpaste to spread more of their property tax revenue to the public schools.

Now the state is saying that Los Angeles County and its cities did not contribute as much money as expected in the last two years and that they owe the state additional tax revenue for public education.

Within the next two years, the county must pay $85 million; county libraries, $837,000; Inglewood, $361,278; Torrance, $145,710; Redondo Beach, $145,349; Hawthorne, $113,313, and Avalon, $57,983. Half will have to be paid by May.

Many officials of smaller cities learned about the cost at a Nov. 2 meeting with the county auditor-controller’s staff and have scrambled to revise their city budgets and possibly cut services to make up for the loss.

While drawing up the 1992-93 budget, the state Legislature created a fund for schools and passed legislation ordering counties to shift property tax revenue from local governments to the schools fund. For the 1993-94 budget, legislators increased the amount to be shifted into the fund.

But state officials said 12 counties, including Los Angeles County, calculated the shift differently than the state did, and in both years did not move enough money from local agencies to schools. And now cities, special districts and the county owe more than $100 million.

What happened, county officials said, was that the state forgot about redevelopment agencies. The state’s formula gave counties, cities and special districts a certain amount and figured on all the rest going to schools. But the county also had to give money to redevelopment agencies in some cities, and took that out of money that otherwise would have gone to the schools.

That meant that in 1993-94 the state fell $300 million short of the $2.6 billion it expected to shift to schools statewide, leading legislators to pass legislation in July to collect the money that was owed and force the county to pay redevelopment agencies out of local government funds, not the school fund, said Steve Olsen, deputy director of the state Finance Department. He said it was either tell cities and counties to pay up or cut state services.

South Bay cities without redevelopment agencies will not have to pay.

Tyler McCauley, county assistant auditor-controller, said that what the county did was legal under state law and that to address the problem, Sacramento legislators are changing the rules. “The long and short of it is, they wanted more money so they rewrote the law,” McCauley said.

Not only must local governments pay the extra money they got over the last two years, but from now on, they will get less money because their share of property tax revenue will be figured on the state’s formula.

“It’s a double hit, “ McCauley said. “It’s like your salary is being cut and it went into effect a year ago.”

After Inglewood officials were informed of the problem, they studied state legislation in an effort to understand the issue. The city will tap its general fund to pay the state, officials said.

“We’re going to be able to manage,” said budget manager Pamela Williams. “It doesn’t require any drastic measures.”

Times correspondent James Benning contributed to this story.

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Pay-Back Time Here are the amounts of money that Los Angeles County and South Bay-area cities owe the state in additional property tax revenue for schools. The amounts must be paid over the next two years. South Bay cities that are not listed do not owe money.

Agency / Amount owed

L.A. County general fund: $85 million

County libraries: $837,000

Avalon: $57,983

Hawthorne: $113,313

Inglewood: $361,278

Redondo Beach: $145,349

Torrance: $145,710