Overhaul of Counties’ Role Urged : Budget: Legislative analyst proposes extending half-cent sales tax and giving revenues to localities. But counties would assume new criminal justice and social service responsibilities.

SACRAMENTO —  Proposing a dramatic restructuring of government that also would help the state balance its budget, the Legislature’s nonpartisan analyst recommended Tuesday that the state extend a temporary half-cent sales tax and give the revenue raised to the counties--along with responsibility for all juvenile criminals, paroled felons and drug abusers.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill also suggested that the counties be made to assume the full financial burden for foster care, adoption assistance, child abuse programs and the effort to move welfare recipients into paying jobs.

The sweeping proposal rests on Hill’s contention that many public services now are inefficiently run because accountability is diffused among city, county and state officials.

The solution, Hill believes, is for the state to take complete control of some programs and shed its obligations for others. She and many lawmakers believe that a competing proposal by Gov. Pete Wilson to shift property tax money away from cities, counties and special districts to help balance the state budget would make the lines of authority even more muddled than they are today.

Wilson, at a separate news conference, said he had not seen Hill’s proposal. But he reiterated his opposition to extending the sales tax, which is due to expire June 30. Hill’s plan would be doomed if Wilson sticks to his position on the sales tax.

“I expect it to expire and I don’t expect it to be re-enacted,” Wilson said.

Nonetheless, Hill’s proposal is sure to generate a lot of discussion in the Capitol, where there is significant support for reorganizing government as lawmakers search for ways to cut state costs.

“This begins the process of fixing the state’s relationship with local government and helps solve the state’s current budget problem,” Hill said in an interview.

The half-cent portion of the sales tax, Hill said, would raise about $1.4 billion in the coming fiscal year if the Legislature and the governor agree to keep it on the books.

She would turn that money over to counties and also give them full responsibility for juvenile justice, adult parole and substance abuse programs.

Currently, counties handle the arrest and trial of juvenile offenders but have the option of keeping a convicted youth in a county-run probation camp or sending the youngster to the California Youth Authority at the state’s expense.

Under Hill’s proposal, the counties would shoulder the entire burden. If they sent a ward to the youth authority, counties would have to reimburse the state for the full cost of providing that detention.

Similarly, counties would be in charge of parole for felons released from prison, and any ex-convicts who violated their parole would be kept in county jails or sent back to state prison at county expense. All of these are now state obligations.

Finally, Hill proposed that the counties assume the full financial burden of providing foster care to children from troubled families, services to abused and neglected children, employment training for welfare recipients, and assistance to parents who adopt “difficult to place children.”

The proposal comes as many counties, including Los Angeles, are on the verge of closing their youth camps and turning their most dangerous young offenders over to the state, which under current law would be required to detain them at significant cost.

Gerald Roos, head of Los Angeles County’s budget office, said the county would be concerned that the revenues shifted to local government would not be sufficient to pay for the services the county would be saddled with.

But with the county preparing for a 25% cut in services should Wilson’s proposed property tax transfer take place, Roos said the Hill proposal might be the only salvation.

“We’re open to any reasonable solution,” he said.

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood) has a bill pending in the Legislature that would give the counties $32 million to keep their youth probation camps open for another year.