D.A., Sheriff Confront Board Over Cuts at Stormy Meeting : Budget: Block threatens lawsuit and Garcetti angrily refuses to begin trimming staff. Numerous protesters fuel combative atmosphere.

In often angry exchanges, Los Angeles County’s top law enforcement officials confronted the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday with blunt warnings about the impact of proposed budget cuts on the criminal justice system.

“The new budget basically throws in the towel,” said Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who contended he would have to lay off 154 prosecutors, 40 investigators and hundreds of other employees if the cuts are approved. “It would have a truly devastating impact on public safety in Los Angeles. . . . We can’t afford layoffs.”

Added Sheriff Sherman Block: “Frankly, our back is against the wall. This will jeopardize safety . . . and our ability to house violent criminals.”

For Los Angeles County’s five elected supervisors, it was an extraordinarily long and argumentative day of testimony on the proposed $11.1-billion budget, which must be hashed out and approved in the coming months.

Unlike similar hearings last week, Tuesday’s meeting was punctuated over and over again by heated arguments. The supervisors argued with each other, other elected officials argued with the supervisors, and board Chairwoman Gloria Molina had a memorable run-in with a union leader.

Hundreds of protesters milled about the Hall of Administration before and during the four-hour budget meeting. Carrying signs attacking Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed and the supervisors, they chanted in protest of the proposed elimination of one in five county jobs.

As dozens of sheriff’s deputies stood by, the demonstrators frequently interrupted the hearing, at times streaming into the auditorium aisles and threatening to shut the meeting down. With union leader Gilbert Cedillo urging them on, the protesters refused to stop chanting “Let us speak!” despite Molina’s shouted orders to do so. In a moment of high theater, Molina challenged Cedillo, saying, “If you want to discuss this, you and I can go into the back room and discuss it.”

Cedillo headed toward the elevated podium where the supervisors sit, and was blocked initially by security officers before joining her briefly. The protesters emptied the auditorium, some of them shouting angrily at Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “We’ve got your number,” one said. “We know where you live.”

Cedillo vowed that the union employees will be back at next week’s meeting. Reed last week proposed $1.2 billion in cuts, including the closure of County-USC Medical Center and the elimination of 18,255 county jobs, as a way to balance the county’s budget.

Last week, the supervisors ordered $257 million in cuts based on Reed’s blueprint, and they ultimately will draft their own budget. But because the board is expected to take little final action on the package until late July, there were few major developments at Tuesday’s hearing.

To avert some of the most dramatic cuts, the supervisors agreed Tuesday to keep open--at least for the summer--a dozen libraries, 30 parks and six swimming pools that had been threatened with closure.

The 12 libraries will be kept open temporarily by an even deeper cut in the county library system’s already meager budget for buying new books.

But County Librarian Sandra Reuben said 10 county libraries that have been open Sundays will close beginning this weekend. And the operating hours of all libraries will be cut an average of 45% next weekend.

A sharply divided board then voted 3 to 2 to move toward creation of a library assessment district, but delayed action until September on imposing a $28.50 per year tax on homes in unincorporated county areas. Democrats Yaroslavsky, Molina and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke voted in favor, with Republicans Deane Dana and Mike Antonovich opposed. “There are too many taxes already,” Dana said.

The parks and pools will be kept open by eliminating many organized recreational programs. The board also unanimously agreed with Antonovich’s request that Gov. Pete Wilson call a special legislative session to deal with the county budget crisis. In a thinly veiled criticism of Wilson’s presidential campaign, Antonovich said: “The governor belongs in Sacramento, not New Hampshire.”

But much of the day focused on law enforcement.

Block told supervisors that he has hired a $140-an-hour law firm and that he would sue the county if the board approved $30 million in proposed cuts in his department. Yaroslavsky responded that such a suit would be a “preposterous spectacle.”

Block said he is threatening to sue because the cuts would create an illegally low level of public safety services by closing jails and laying off hundreds of deputies.

“I have no intention of imposing curtailments until the board adopts a budget,” Block said. “I’ve been through that game before.”

In the end, the supervisors decided once again to postpone at least one of their toughest choices until later. They pledged to meet with Block in closed session at their budget meeting next Wednesday to discuss ways to avert his lawsuit.

Molina suggested that the supervisors may even join Block in some concerted effort to seek more revenues for law enforcement.

Garcetti’s presentation was more confrontational.

The county’s top prosecutor insisted that he could not initiate any layoffs despite the supervisors’ directive last week that he and nearly all other department heads start imposing a 20% budget cut.

Armed with glossy charts and graphs, Garcetti said that even a 5% cut would dramatically affect his department and its ability to prosecute violent criminals. It would also hamper efforts to try highly publicized cases such as the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which he said would lose five of its 13 prosecutors.

In one heated exchange with the supervisors after another, Garcetti repeatedly asked for the same delays in implementing the proposed 20% cuts that the supervisors gave Block and several other department heads last week.

“It sounds like you just want to buy some time to get out from under this,” Yaroslavsky said. The board’s most recently elected supervisor said Block volunteered to cut 5% from his budget while the supervisors wrangle with the budget and challenged Garcetti to do the same.

“Are you willing to take a 5% cut right now?” he asked.

“No,” said Garcetti, to cheers from the audience. “I cannot.”

“You want to be treated like the sheriff, you take a budget cut right now,” Yaroslavsky replied.

Supervisor Burke then suggested that some deputy district attorneys in specialized units could do other tasks “in their downtime.”

“Excuse me,” Garcetti said, interrupting her. “In their downtime?”

The supervisors decided not to vote to exempt Garcetti from the cuts, meaning that he must gamble in a sense: If he doesn’t begin implementing cuts by the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1, the cuts will hurt even more later because they will have to be made in a shorter period, he was told by the supervisors.

Trailed by a group of reporters, Garcetti left the auditorium and held an impromptu news conference outside. “I’m an elected official,” he said angrily, “and they can’t order me to do anything. I cannot conceive of [the proposed layoffs] happening. It is not going to happen.”

The county’s financial predicament spilled into the electoral arena in earnest Tuesday as former RTD President Gordana Swanson announced her candidacy for the board in next year’s elections.

“Our financial house must be put in order,” said Swanson, who sharply criticized retiring 4th District Supervisor Deane Dana as part of a “back-room, wheeling-and-dealing” environment that has allowed the county’s financial problems to mount. Dana denied those charges.

Appearing with family members Tuesday, Swanson said the county should be run more like a business, cutting perks and inflated salaries and making profit off such lucrative “jewels” as Marina del Rey.

In other developments Tuesday, the Department of Public Social Services released its budget projections, saying layoff notices could go out next month to more than 2,200 employees, with demotions for even more.

Among the layoffs projected in other departments by the county or the union Tuesday: 1,034 in Probation, 260 lost jobs in the assessor’s office, 276 in Children and Family Services, 200 in the district attorney’s office, 168 in Parks and Recreation, 250 in the public defender’s office, 172 in the public libraries, 457 in the Sheriff’s Department and more than 350 in the Superior and Municipal courts.