County Supervisors Delay Plan for Widespread Layoffs

The Board of Supervisors gave thousands of county workers targeted for layoffs at least a one-week reprieve Friday while they continue dealing with the county’s worst budget crisis.

The board’s move came only hours after a Superior Court judge had temporarily blocked the layoffs.

It was a day of rapid-fire developments as the supervisors engaged in rancorous debate as the hard choices approached on the proposed $11.1-billion budget.

* Sheriff Sherman Block disclosed that he has agreed to drop his lawsuit challenging proposed cuts in his department after getting an additional $42 million in funding.

* The supervisors indicated that they expect to approve a bare-bones budget Monday even though they are far short of the money needed to make it work, especially in health services.

* Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne issued a restraining order barring the supervisors from the planned July 31 layoffs of more than 2,500 county employees, most of them in welfare and probation offices. The supervisors voted unanimously hours later to postpone the layoffs even longer--until Aug. 7.

After some of the most heated arguments to date on the budget crisis, the supervisors endorsed a last-minute legislative proposal that would allow them to take $75 million a year from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

By putting off adoption of the budget, the supervisors gave themselves a few days to make what may be the toughest decisions of their political careers.

“We are not prepared to make the decisions that are critical,” Board Chairwoman Gloria Molina said. “We must delay this vote.”

The board is seeking to close an unprecedented $1.2-billion deficit without dismantling the county’s vast health care system for millions of poor residents or gutting law enforcement and services such as parks and libraries.

Molina said the supervisors could not take action with legislators still wrangling over a state budget that has direct impact on county affairs. County officials also want to exhaust some last-ditch efforts to get state and federal assistance, she said.

Wayne’s order angered some supervisors, but it was hailed by the county’s largest employees union, which filed the lawsuit earlier this month, and by relieved employees in offices around the county.

“Our position all along is that these jobs can be saved, that there is a need for these jobs and that we need breathing space to keep these services operating and these people working until we can secure funding,” said Steve Weingarten, spokesman for Service Employees International Union, Local 660.

Block agreed to drop a lawsuit in which he sought to force the county to give him $23 million that he alleges the supervisors illegally withheld from his department even though it was earmarked for law enforcement.

Block confirmed that he played a major behind-the-scenes role in convincing the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Assn. to distribute $144 million in surplus pension fund earnings back to the county to help in dealing with the budget crisis. Of that money, the Sheriff’s Department is expected to get the largest chunk, almost $23 million.

Before dropping the lawsuit, Block said, his department received an additional $19 million from the county. “We’re still going to suffer a significant cut,” he said in an interview. “But it will not require us to close another [jail] or curtail areas of patrol.”

Although the board delayed action on the most critical aspect of their financial crisis--health care--the supervisors indicated that they may vote Monday on a health plan. The proposal was outlined by a blue-ribbon task force they appointed more than a month ago to help them eliminate a $655-million deficit in the health services department.

In a 4-0 vote, the supervisors also approved a hastily drawn motion backing the state legislation that would enable them to use $75 million in sales taxes from the MTA each year for the next five years.

“The choice is whether we continue to build a subway . . . at the current pace or slow the construction down somewhat in order that this county can keep its head above water for a five-year period,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “Nobody is going to die because the subway is going to be a year or two years late, but people may die if they don’t have a clinic or facility.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, past chairman of the MTA, said the $75 million a year in transportation funds would be a “lifeline for the county” in its fiscal crisis.

But Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who abstained from voting to support the raid on MTA funds, protested that the move could threaten transit programs for the poor and the disabled.

Yaroslavsky heatedly disputed Burke’s argument and questioned whether opponents of the tax shift were more interested in protecting major contractors who build subway tunnels rather than aiding the poor.

Molina took a different tack. Saying that the legislation to divert MTA money was intended to divide local officials, she added: “It’s all part of a very sick, sick game that Sacramento is playing with L.A. County.”

In fact, the last-ditch effort to tap MTA funds triggered a furious lobbying counteroffensive.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan weighed into the controversy, placing a telephone call to Gov. Pete Wilson urging him to reject the shift.

“These are desperate proposals for a desperate situation,” said Riordan, who is also vice chairman of the MTA board. The mayor said the proposed shift “breaks the public trust and provides no incentives for the county to get its budget house in order.”

Riordan said that if the tax shift is approved, he will ask the MTA lawyers to examine a legal challenge.

“The county’s desperate fiscal situation affects us all,” Riordan said. “Now is not the time to undertake actions that divide us; now is the time to work together to achieve long-term fiscal health for the region.”

Transit officials warn that the last-minute maneuver will have a “devastating impact” on the county’s rail construction program, including delaying work on the extension of the subway to the city’s Eastside, Westside and San Fernando Valley and on the building of the Downtown-to-Pasadena trolley line.

MTA Chairman Larry Zarian chided Yaroslavsky, saying, “We have a responsibility as the MTA not to balance the county budget.”

But Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who is pushing the tax shift, summed up the MTA’s problem when he said: “Which is better, sinkholes or hospitals?”

Friday marked the third day in a row in which the supervisors averted an expected showdown over the budget, and more pointedly, cuts in the health care network.

Last month, the supervisors voted to cut services in many departments, shaving $257 million. That leaves at least $1 billion more in cuts or in additional revenue.

The supervisors hope that the Clinton Administration will provide them with as much as $200 million in funds for outpatient care. But even that would require Wilson’s approval. By late Friday, the governor was still studying whether to approve a pilot health care project.

The supervisors spent much of the day discussing how to pass their budget despite the uncertainty of those federal funds. They were warned by Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed that they could only include hard and fast revenue sources.

That means the board may vote on a budget Monday with the knowledge that they will have to go back in subsequent months and find even more cuts, including the closure of County-USC Medical Center or other hospitals, health task force Chairman Burt Margolin said.

He also confirmed a Times report that some supervisors want him to become a health czar to steer the county through the health crisis--one of the task force recommendations--but Margolin said it was too early to say whether he would accept the job if it is offered.

Molina said the supervisors would be working through the weekend to secure more sources of funding and to achieve some kind of consensus on what to cut, particularly in health care.

Faced with such tough decisions, at least one board member openly criticized Judge Wayne for issuing her restraining order Friday. The union sued on the grounds that the supervisors failed to properly negotiate the $257 million in cuts and layoffs before ordering them last month. Wayne did not rule on the lawsuit’s merits, but said she needed more time to study the matter and set another hearing for Tuesday.

“You can’t have judges tying the hands of elected officials and carrying out personnel matters that have been done through due process,” Antonovich said. “We’ll be taking action on Monday to enact the reductions because there aren’t the dollars for those services.”

The board’s action spares the 1,781 Department of Public Social Service workers and 785 Probation employees who had been targeted for layoff Aug. 1. It also blocks the demotions of 840 other employees.

“We don’t consider this a victory,” said Weingarten, the union spokesman. “It is just breathing space. But we feel we are within sight of saving these jobs.”

The supervisors must still contend with other lawsuits, especially if they opt to close hospitals, they said.

Times staff writer Richard Simon contributed to this report.