COUNTY BUDGET TO BE PRESENTED : SPENDING PLAN `PRECARIOUSLY' BALANCED, JANSSEN SAYS.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

After working through two forced demotions in 15 months at his job at Olive View Medical Center, the last thing Steve Casas wanted to hear about Monday was Los Angeles County's proposed $12 billion budget.

As far as the Littlerock man was concerned, it was more bad news.

``We're the soldiers that make management look good, and they're wanting to cut us out,'' said Casas, a patient financial services worker. ``We don't want to lose jobs.''

The budget pitched by David Janssen, the county's chief administrative officer, proposes no pay raises for the county's 81,000 workers - many of whom have gone five years without a raise. And the Health Services Department, where Casas is employed, could face deep cuts amid a $123 million deficit.

Janssen said the proposed budget - which maintains basic services and staffing - is balanced, ``but precariously.''

In the four-inch-thick budget document that will be presented today to the Board of Supervisors, Janssen indicates the county has a ``guardedly improved fiscal outlook,'' but only barely so. Though it is better than any proposal in the past five difficult years, it is not, he said, a rosy picture.

``We're virtually at the point where we can't solve the problem at the local level anymore,'' he said. ``We're rapidly approaching the point where the state or federal government will have to do something.''

By tapping federal and state funds, the budget provides more money for the county's workfare program, called Greater Avenues for Independence or GAIN. And it adds mental health workers in jails and caseworkers in the Department of Children's Services.

Voters will decide in June if library and fire services can be maintained at current levels.

But the crisis remains great for health services, which will cost the county an estimated $2.3 billion next year.

Although Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey and its 1,300 jobs go off the county books because of privatization, Janssen said officials may have to ``re-engineer'' as many as 1,000 to 3,000 health jobs to trim the health department's deficit.

In other areas, the budget would add 304 case workers in the GAIN workfare program, which requires eligible welfare recipients to spend time hunting for jobs and building job skills. Welfare reform changes are expected to put huge new demands on GAIN, and the new workers will help expand from 37,500 to 50,000 a year the number of recipients in the program.

The budget also would add 115 mental health workers in the jails to deal with severe problems highlighted by an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation.

The budget also calls for a slight reduction in funding for most sheriff's operations, other than a $55 million increase from contract payments from the state and federal governments that are financing operations of the Twin Towers Correctional Center near downtown.

``On balance, it's a good document, but it's based on a number of assumptions we may not live to see,'' said Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky. ``The county is in much better position than it was two years ago, but it's not in good shape.''

Yaroslavsky said supervisors would like to give county employees a raise but aren't sure how to finance it, given other problems in the budget.

``We can't go on forever without a pay raise,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``But any discussion of a pay raise has to go with a discussion about where the money will come from. Right now, it's not readily apparent where the money will come from. We'll have a better idea as we get closer to summer.''

CAPTION(S):

2 charts

CHART: L.A. COUNTY BUDGET

(1) Where the money comes from

(2) Where it goes