Enormity of Budget Crisis Steered Board’s Adversaries to a Compromise : NEWS ANALYSIS

Just a week before they joined in an unlikely alliance to rescue Los Angeles County from a budgetary nightmare, Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Gloria Molina were sniping at each other over who was to blame for the fiscal crisis.

The argument was predictable: Antonovich produced charts in red ink showing how illegal immigrants contributed to the county’s $588-million budget shortfall. Molina shot back with a bitter critique of Republican social policies, throwing in references to the Iran-Contra and savings and loan scandals.

Any lingering bitterness over that confrontation--just one of dozens between the board’s most headstrong members--suddenly disappeared Tuesday, when Antonovich and Molina co-authored a compromise that restored $54.7 million to hospitals, welfare, law enforcement and other areas.

“Each had to give a little to win a lot, which resulted in a victory for the people,” Antonovich said Wednesday. “We are mature leaders who are capable of coming up with a solution.”

The deal was struck over two days of telephone calls and meetings, many in Molina’s and Antonovich’s eighth-floor offices and in the passageways of the Hall of Administration.

In the end, those involved in the deal say it was driven by the severity of the budget crisis and supervisors’ knowledge that approving the kinds of deep cuts in county services recommended by Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon could have proved politically dangerous.

In early September, Dixon proposed more than $300 million in budget cuts, including the elimination of 4,200 jobs. That would have required the closure of six sheriff’s facilities, elimination of one-eighth of the welfare department’s work force and sharp cutbacks at hospitals and clinics.

Although the board did cut $250 million from the budget, Tuesday’s agreement postponed many of the most serious cuts in county services, raising questions over its fiscal soundness.

The deal evolved during a week in which the supervisors’ offices were flooded with calls from constituents concerned about the impact of the drastic cuts under consideration.

Antonovich had first proposed a plan Sept. 22 to avoid the cuts in the Sheriff’s and Fire departments and the district attorney’s office. Under Dixon’s plan, 13 area offices of the district attorney would have been closed and more than 100 prosecutors laid off. Supervisor Deane Dana submitted a plan similar to Antonovich’s a few days later.

Molina said her office began negotiating with Antonovich on Friday after finding other supervisors had little interest in her own plan to protect health services, where 1,600 jobs were at stake, and restore proposed welfare cuts.

“We couldn’t get any real attention from most of the offices,” Molina said in an interview. “Then we talked to Antonovich’s office and they said, ‘Yeah, let’s look at these revenues.’ At that point, there was at least somebody to start talking to.”

According to board sources, Molina and Antonovich reached agreement on most elements of a budget compromise, then won the consensus of supervisors Dana and Kenneth Hahn.

In essence, Antonovich gave top priority to law enforcement while Molina gave more importance to funding the health department.

Molina said she successfully pushed for the creation of a $60-million reserve fund that will support health programs if the county fails in its attempts to solicit more state and federal funds.

In turn, Antonovich and Dana won a key Molina concession: she agreed to restore all but $5 million to the Sheriff’s Department budget, withdrawing a demand that the sheriff cut $15 million by reducing administrative costs.

Antonovich, a Republican and a welfare critic, found himself in the unlikely position of supporting a plan to save the jobs of 350 welfare caseworkers.

To help finance the plan, Hahn reluctantly gave in to a Molina request to give up most of the board’s discretionary fund--money used by each supervisor for pet programs in his or her district.

Mas Fukai, Hahn’s chief deputy, said Hahn wanted to preserve more of the discretionary fund but “when it comes to health services and sheriff’s, it will have to take a back seat.”

Some board sources said that despite deep animosities among the supervisors, the compromises came about because their staff members maintain good working relationships.

“For the first time ever, everyone realized we had a very difficult situation in front of us,” said Don Knabe, Dana’s chief deputy. “Everyone got a sense we all had to work together.”

Many of the details were worked out Tuesday morning as the board was beginning six hours of budget deliberations. In front of several television cameras, aides to all the supervisors except Edelman sat on the floor next to board members’ desks and worked out the arithmetic to balance the budget.

On Friday afternoon, deputies to Antonovich offered Molina an important revenue-generating proposal as she boarded an eighth-floor elevator. They suggested eliminating most transportation allowances given top county managers--a move Molina said she had long supported.

“We always know where they’re coming from and we work well together,” Molina spokesman Robert Alaniz said of Antonovich’s staff. “His people are up front and they know the issues well.”

Not participating in this process was Molina’s liberal colleague Ed Edelman, who called the last-minute budget agreement a “back-room deal.” Edelman said he was not informed of the details of the plan until early Tuesday. He said four supervisors had, in effect, agreed in private to a plan that should have been discussed publicly first.

Both Molina and Antonovich took issue with Edelman’s remarks, saying they made numerous efforts to contact his office.

“I think it’s pretty disgraceful because he’s being very dishonest,” Molina said. “He was invited and invited and invited.”

Antonovich said: “Mr. Edelman was invited to participate and his staff was invited by our office and they chose to go AWOL.”