Block Says Layoffs, Jail Closings May Return : L.A. County: Sheriff warns that $4 million in emergency funds will only last a month. He calls for showdown with governor.

One day after the Board of Supervisors gave him $4 million in emergency funding, Sheriff Sherman Block said all his departmental cutbacks--including jail closings, inmate releases and deputy layoffs--are only on a one-month hold.

Block warned Wednesday that the cutbacks would resume, with hundreds of layoff notices going out at the end of June, unless permanent new funding is obtained. That will happen, he said, only if state legislators confront Gov. Pete Wilson on two major state budget issues.

The sheriff renewed his demand that a temporary half-cent addition to the sales tax be extended statewide beyond the present June 30 termination date, and brusquely rejected Wilson’s proposal that the state’s 58 counties be allowed to vote individually on whether to extend it locally.

Block called the governor’s idea unconscionable, saying that the cost of such a special election in Los Angeles County alone could finance the employment of 150 sheriff’s deputies for a year.

Block also told a news conference at the Sybil Brand Institute that legislators should reject the governor’s proposal to shift $2.6 billion in property tax revenues from the cities and counties to education. Without such an action, his department will face massive budget cuts at the hands of the county, which is dependent on the property tax, he said.

The sheriff, meanwhile, testily rejected an assertion made by Supervisor Gloria Molina on Tuesday that the supervisors, beyond establishing an overall budget for the Sheriff’s Department, can properly instruct Block how to spend the money. Molina maintained that Block cannot close jails without the board’s approval.

Block, however, said he is confident he could win a lawsuit over the matter. “The sheriff has the sole authority to assign and utilize resources as he sees fit,” he said. “The (government) code says very clearly that these decisions are mine.”

He said hundreds of inmates will be bused back to Mira Loma, the jail facility in the Antelope Valley he briefly closed this week, as early as this weekend--after guards are reassigned there--as a result of the supervisors’ approval of the emergency funds.

Block showed reporters a six-minute video, produced with $20,000 of his private campaign funds, deploring the prospective cutbacks. The tape, which Block said will be distributed to service groups and the news media, says that layoffs of deputies and releases of prisoners could severely jeopardize public safety in the county.

If such cuts are made, “How many more lives will be lost?” due to increased crime, the video asks.

The sheriff said he has contacted the offices of California’s two U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, to urge them to intercede with the Clinton Administration to provide federal funding to avert law enforcement cutbacks in California.

President Clinton has spoken of adding 100,000 law enforcement officers throughout the nation, Block said, but attrition in his own force, due to earlier budget shortfalls, reduced the number of his sworn officers by 600--to about 7,300--in the last year.