Yaroslavsky, Reed Threatened : Finances: Extra security precautions are taken in tense atmosphere of budget crisis. Steps include use of drivers, installation of devices at home.

As Los Angeles County’s day of reckoning with its unprecedented budget deficit nears, threats against Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed have prompted the county to take special security precautions.

Yaroslavsky is the swing vote on the five-member Board of Supervisors, which is considering proposals to enact sweeping budget cuts that could cost 10,000 county employees their jobs as early as next week. He confirmed Thursday that the county is installing new security equipment at his Los Angeles home. Yaroslavsky said he would pay for the extensive yardwork necessary for the equipment to function.

Yaroslavsky said the threats started in recent weeks as the supervisors began discussing massive layoffs of county employees.

“I have never been fearful for my security” during 19 years as a member of the Los Angeles City Council, Yaroslavsky said Thursday morning, as he watched county workers chain-sawing trees and shrubs from his front yard to make way for security devices.

But, he added, “I wouldn’t be doing this if I was in the same state of mind I was in the last 19 years. I’m concerned, especially for my family.”

Reed, who proposed closing the $1.2-billion budget gap by slashing services and eliminating 18,255 budgeted positions, has been driven to and from work each day recently by a Sheriff’s Department official.

In fact, Lt. Lee Taylor, the county’s security manager, said all of the five supervisors have been told to use drivers in the near future for safety reasons, rather than driving themselves to work.

“We have an increased security awareness in all county buildings, especially the governmental buildings Downtown,” Taylor said. “I believe it is in Sally’s and the supervisors’ interests to have someone driving them to work.”

“I wouldn’t call these death threats, but we take them very seriously,” Taylor said about threats against Yaroslavsky.

Taylor also said that whenever new supervisors are sworn in--as Yaroslavsky was in December--they are encouraged to improve home security. At first, Yaroslavsky said, he did not want any special security measures taken while he was busy getting a feel for his new job and his wife, Barbara, was running for his old City Council seat.

Recently, Yaroslavsky and Reed increasingly have criticized the county’s practice of spending beyond its means. They have also said that a restructuring--and downsizing of jobs and services--is needed immediately. During that time, he said, he and his office have been the target of threats.

Security has been tightened at county offices, especially at the Hall of Administration, where the supervisors have presided over often-rancorous public meetings held to discuss the proposed budget cuts.

Nineteen protesters were arrested outside the building late last month and another 12 were arrested this week after breaching security and staging a sit-in at Reed’s seventh-floor office in the building.

At an unusually raucous board meeting recently, dozens of mostly union protesters disrupted the supervisors as they discussed the proposed cuts. “We know where you live,” many shouted to Yaroslavsky after they were told to leave the auditorium.

The union representing half of the county’s 85,000 employees, Service Employees International Union Local 660, has threatened more protests and other actions designed to protest the budget cuts and pressure the supervisors into finding alternatives.

SEIU Local 660 spokesman Steve Weingarten said the union has made no threats. “We believe very strongly that the county is obligated to provide a safe workplace. We sympathize with Zev if he received . . . any kind of threat.”

Weingarten said union members’ shouts of “We know where you live” and similar remarks at supervisors meetings and union rallies are “nothing that could be construed as threats.”

Under the proposed cuts outlined by Reed and under consideration by the supervisors, as many as 10,000 employees could be laid off, including workers in hospitals, health clinics, welfare officers, parks and libraries that could be shut down in an effort to balance the budget. Even County-USC Medical Center, the busiest public hospital in the nation, could be closed, although county officials now suggest that other hospitals would probably be shuttered first.

The supervisors are scheduled to begin deliberating what cuts to make next week. Although they enacted $257 million in cuts last month--based on a motion by Yaroslavsky and Supervisor Mike Antonovich--they still need to make another $1 billion in cuts, or find that much money in additional sources of revenue. With federal and state lawmakers increasingly skeptical about proposals to bail out the county, the proposed cuts and layoffs are becoming more likely by the day, Yaroslavsky and other county leaders said.

Reed, who confirmed that she has been driven to work since she unveiled her budget proposal last month, had little to say about the security measures she is taking. “It is bad security to talk about security,” she said Thursday. “Precautions have been taken.”

Two supervisors already have drivers and two more have made inquiries about getting them, said Taylor. He did not give their names.

More than a dozen county Parks and Recreation workers arrived at Yaroslavsky’s Los Angeles home about 8 a.m. Thursday and stayed past noon clearing bushes and trimming trees, transforming a densely covered front yard into a near-naked one.

Arriving home from a last-ditch lobbying trip to Washington to seek federal help for the county, the supervisor came upon four truckloads of tree branches, shrubs and other flora that had been ripped and sawed from his yard.

He shook his head as he slowly surveyed the damage. “I’m kind of amazed at how much they cleared out,” he said, garment bag still in hand. “I’m a little ticked off.”