Courts Stall Two Union Challenges to County Layoffs : Budget: Judges deny restraining orders. At least 1,400 workers could be affected, and pink slips may start going out today.

Two unions seeking to block the imminent layoffs of at least 1,400 Los Angeles County employees were dealt setbacks Friday when judges refused to grant them temporary restraining orders.

Although the two lawsuits had fearful county officials worried about judicial meddling in their financial affairs, both judges acted promptly to allay their concerns.

In denying one legal challenge from the county’s largest employee union, Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne said such matters are best left to the five-member elected Board of Supervisors--especially when the nation’s most populous county is suffering from financial hardship.

“It is a budgetary and political decision, not a decision for a judge to make,” she told lawyers from Service Employees International Union, Local 660, just hours after they filed suit.

Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed said the judges’ rulings were “very positive and very important in terms of our momentum [in closing the deficit]. It’s encouraging.”

The union, which represents half of the county’s more than 80,000 employees, had sought the restraining order as part of its effort to block the supervisors from slashing 20% in services and jobs to close a $1.2-billion deficit. In its lawsuit, the union contended that the supervisors violated the County Budget Act when they approved $257 million in budget cuts during the last week without going through the mandated public hearings and before approving their final annual budget.

Four county lawyers who attended Wayne’s hearing said that her prompt decision was just, and that the supervisors had met the statutory requirements to lay off the workers.

“This was a fundamental challenge to the legislative political actions of the largest local government body in the country,” Assistant County Counsel Donovan M. Main said after Wayne’s ruling from the bench. “The board has a very severe fiscal crisis they are trying to deal with . . . and we’ve got to take some kinds of actions now. The process will go on, and it will be full and open.”

Union lawyer James Rutkowski argued that the public should have been allowed to speak on the budget cuts before the board adopted them. He said the restraining order was needed because the pink slips for workers are slated to go out as early as today.

The union will continue to challenge the proposed layoffs in court and in arguments before the supervisors, who are scheduled to begin hearing more public input next week, Rutkowski and union officials said. Although denying the restraining order, Wayne set a July 20 hearing on the merits of the case.

In a separate action Friday, Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien denied a similar request by the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Assn. without comment after taking the issue under advisement for a day. He set a July 13 hearing date so both sides could argue the case more fully.

The Chicano group also said the supervisors barred public comment before approving budget cuts. And county lawyers offered the same response: that supervisors followed all correct procedures.

Both labor groups have urged state lawmakers to help the county so that layoffs can be averted.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Richard G. Polanco suggested another potential option for the county to partially close its $1.2-billion deficit without employee layoffs: use of transportation funds.

Polanco sent a letter Friday to the supervisors suggesting a special election in which local voters would be allowed to decide whether they want to redirect 1% in sales taxes set aside for transportation projects toward general purposes such as closing the budget gap, especially given the problems in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s subway project.

A Los Angeles Democrat and member of the Transportation Committee, Polanco said the change could be temporary. That also could provide the county with $375 million a year in much-needed revenue, he said. The money, he added, could be used to keep open County-USC Medical Center, which is in his district and has been threatened with closure.

But such a change could delay the Pasadena Light Rail Project, which also would be in his district. “While it pains me to know that my proposal could lead to a temporary choice between these two facilities,” Polanco wrote, “I know we must do what is right to preserve public health in Los Angeles County.”