County Power to Tax Cigarettes Proposed : Recovery: Levy of 25 cents per pack could raise $34 million a year for O.C., Assembly Democrats say.

Assembly Democrats on Tuesday proposed giving county supervisors the power to impose local cigarette taxes as a means of raising cash for Orange, Los Angeles and other financially battered counties.

Orange County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton expressed skepticism regarding the plan.

“Obviously we’re going to have to consider everything, but I’m not one who favors new taxes at all even though I abhor the smoking habit,” said Stanton, speaking on the same day that Orange County had unveiled its own plan for bankruptcy recovery to state lawmakers.

“We worked very hard to get a plan here in Orange County that would extricate us from bankruptcy very quickly,” the supervisor said. “It’s kind of upsetting to get hit with something like this out of the blue; did they just come up with it today? We all would have appreciated some signal.”

Supporters of the cigarette-tax measure said an additional 25-cent-per-pack tax, which is opposed by Gov. Pete Wilson, would raise $34.4 million a year for bankrupt Orange County and $120 million a year for Los Angeles County.

Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Democratic leader Willie Brown of San Francisco said the proposal would not only help combat smoking but would buffer against potentially devastating local budget cuts in health care for the poor.

“This gives counties the ability to solve their own problems,” said Friedman, a leader in the legislative effort to devise a program to ease the crunch of the Los Angeles County fiscal crisis. “It’s not a handout.”

Friedman, supported by a coalition of health and county supervisor organizations and Sheriff Sherman Block of Los Angeles County, announced the proposal in the face of Wilson’s adamant opposition to new taxes.

“The governor doesn’t think we should be raising taxes in California, period,” said press secretary Paul Kranhold. As an alternative, Kranhold noted that Wilson is supporting a package of county government relief bills in the Legislature. The bills are opposed by Democrats.

The Friedman proposal would authorize county supervisors to levy a local sales tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products without submitting the issue to the voters. The Legislature stripped local governments of such tobacco-taxing authority in 1967 and instead earmarked tobacco revenue strictly for state coffers.

The state tax on cigarettes currently is 37 cents a pack. It was last increased in 1993 when Wilson signed a Friedman bill that tacked on two additional cents to finance research into the causes of breast cancer and to find cures for the disease.

Friedman said her plan would authorize county supervisors to set the local tax rate at any level to meet local needs. She said a tax of as little as a nickel per pack would raise nearly $24 million annually for Los Angeles County and $7 million for Orange County.

Friedman announced her bill as legislators, lobbyists and local officials tried to devise a program in the final four weeks of the session that would help rescue both Los Angeles and Orange counties. Virtually no one in Sacramento has proposed a direct bailout of either because the state has no cash to spare.

Likewise, the imposition of new taxes had been virtually ruled out as an option--not only by Wilson, a presidential candidate, but by most legislative leaders who said their members have no stomach for it. Friedman said her bill would require a simple majority vote for approval instead of the two-thirds super majority necessary for a direct tax levy.

Friedman said the tobacco industry has reported that nationally 51 counties and 393 cities levy cigarette taxes, ranging from 35 cents a pack in Hampton, Va., to 8 cents in New York City.