State Budget Bite May Be Hard to Swallow

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget would cost Los Angeles County $273 million in the coming fiscal year, county budget analysts said Monday.

The state spending plan, which would bite into the county’s property tax revenue and potentially wipe out 19 probation camps for juvenile offenders, would come on top of $269 million in reductions that Los Angeles County must make to balance its own budget.

While county leaders anticipated the property tax reduction -- part of a pact that the governor had made with local governments weeks earlier -- they were surprised to learn that Schwarzenegger’s May 13 plan did not include $201 million for juvenile probation camps.

Los Angeles County alone would lose $82 million per year for its probation department, forcing the layoff of up to 1,600 probation officers, said Chief Probation Officer Richard Shumsky.

“If the governor doesn’t come through with a solution with the Legislature, we would close every probation camp,” Shumsky said. About 4,200 juvenile offenders would then either be released or sent to the troubled California Youth Authority, where they would serve longer terms under harsher conditions.

Caseloads for probation officers would soar and many crime-prevention programs, such as those that discourage gangs and recover guns, would also be eliminated, Shumsky said.

In the Legislature, support for restoring the probation funding is building. In a February letter to the governor, signed by 39 Assembly members and eight senators, lawmakers said: “If we can turn these young people around at this stage in their lives, we will save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in future incarceration costs and rehabilitate those juveniles who have yet the best chance to lead productive lives.”

Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget would also defer state payments for programs that the state requires counties to provide, such as mental health care for disturbed children. That would cost Los Angeles County $35 million.

The county also stands to lose $19 million for group home placement for juvenile offenders, $18 million for road improvement projects, $11 million to pay part of a federal penalty assessed because California failed to automate its system for tracking child-support payments and $5 million for early screening and diagnosis of mental health problems.

Because many of the cuts would be temporary -- the annual $103-million reduction in property tax revenue, for instance, would last two years -- county leaders hope to use reserves or other one-time sources of cash to help fund spending in the 2004-05 budget, which takes effect July 1.

The county must finalize its $17-billion budget by the end of June. Usually county supervisors approve the budget without knowing what the state will do -- and then amend it months later to reflect the state’s decisions.

But this year, Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said he is betting that state lawmakers will pass a budget on time, an unusual accomplishment in recent years. The deadline is June 15.

That would put local officials on a tight timeline to incorporate the state cuts into their own spending plan.