$12.1 BILLION BUDGET APPROVED, FUNDS FOR TWIN TOWERS LACKING.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

Los Angeles County supervisors adopted a $12.1 billion budget Thursday for the 1996-97 fiscal year, but have yet to find money to open the Twin Towers jail, maintain probation camps or make up for potential shortfalls in the welfare department.

Those issues will be taken up again in August, once the state Legislature approves its budget and the county has a clearer revenue picture, officials said.

Zev Yaroslavsky was the only one of the five members of the Board of Supervisors to vote against the financial plan.

``I'm very disappointed in the direction we're going,'' Yaroslavsky said.

``This budget does not open Twin Towers. It does not give us any assurances or any idea of how to keep probation camps open. It keeps us on a spending curve that is unsustainable.''

Yaroslavsky had proposed a plan calling for cuts throughout county departments in order to raise the $18 million needed to open Twin Towers, the 4,000-bed downtown jail that has sat vacant for almost a year because the county does not have the money to run it.

Yaroslavsky also wants to build up reserves in order to get Wall Street to give the county better bond ratings. His proposal failed to get a second.

But Supervisor Gloria Molina accused Yaroslavsky of grandstanding, noting that he did not support her plan to take $5 million from the discretionary accounts each supervisor uses to support special projects in his or her district.

While the fate of the brand new Twin Towers has been the most high-profile issue of this budget season, Molina said it is not necessarily her top priority.

``Before you fund Twin Towers, you've got to make some decision about probation camps,'' Molina said.

The camps are in danger of closure because the federal government has announced it no longer will provide the county with the emergency funding that has been used in the past to pay for the camps.

Another major concern is whether the state once again will grant the county a waiver of administrative costs it has within the Department of Public Social Services. Without the waiver, the supervisors may be faced with laying off workers or putting a tighter time limit on how long people can stay on general relief.

Sandra Davis, interim chief county administrative officer, said that although funds have not been identified for Twin Towers, the probation camps and the welfare shortfall, her office has been directed to identify some $50 million in cuts throughout county departments. Davis said she is confident that the county can find the money.

``I see Twin Towers opening in '96-'97,'' she said.

Earlier this week the supervisors indicated their commitment to getting Twin Towers open by January when they voted to direct Sheriff Sherman Block to set aside $500,000 in his budget to begin preparations to open the jail. On Thursday the board took another step, directing that if Twin Towers is opened, that all the new available beds be used for new prisoners, and not just to relieve overcrowding at the county's other jails.

Block informed the supervisors last week that his plan was not to add to the population of prisoners once Twin Towers opened, but to use it to ease prisoner crowding at other jails.

The board will take up the budget again Aug. 20 in an attempt to resolve the funding issues for Twin Towers, welfare and the probation camps.

Yaroslavsky has set his sights on trimming the sheriff's budget, contending that his fellow panelists have been afraid to take on Block.

``Even Daryl Gates didn't have this kind of pull over the city government,'' said Yaroslavsky, who dealt with the former Los Angeles Police Department chief during his 19 years as a city councilman. ``There is this fear about talking about the Sheriff's Department budget. Even the Queen of England now has to account for how she spends her money.''

Yaroslavsky was angered last week after Block announced to the board that there was no way he could cut money from his budget to contribute to the push to open Twin Towers.

The board voted to ask county staffers to provide a more detailed line-item budget for them to review for all departments. Molina and Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke supported the plan to get more detailed budget information but declined to single out Block, as Yaroslavsky suggested.