SHERIFF, BOARD BATTLE USING AUDIT'S RESULTS.

Byline: Troy Anderson  Staff Writer

In the latest volley in the budget battle between Sheriff Lee Baca and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, both sides used an audit released Tuesday as grist that their side was right all along.

Assistant Sheriff Dennis Dahlman said the audit - written in a style that one county official called ``auditese'' - shows that the county's budget process is flawed and doesn't accurately reflect the ``way we spend the money they give us.''

``They tend to fund us on a ballpark basis and move money around from account to account,'' Dahlman said.

But board Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky said the audit confirms what the supervisors have been arguing all along - that the sheriff overspent his salaries-and-benefits budget by $85 million in 2000-01 and by a projected $55 million in 2001-02.

The audit noted that while the department added 950 employees in the past four years, the sheriff and the Chief Administrative Office did not increase the sheriff's salary-and-benefits budget for 540 of the jobs and did not eliminate other unfilled positions.

``The number of positions in that department has grown so much,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``What he's been doing is staffing more positions than he has funding for.''

The release of the audit, requested by Yaroslavsky before the latest budget skirmish, comes only a few days after Baca threatened - and then backed down temporarily on - a plan to release 400 jail inmates because of budget cuts.

At a news conference Friday, Baca said he was giving the supervisors until July 1 to change their minds and restore $100 million to his $1.6 billion budget.

Earlier this year, Baca said if the supervisors didn't restore the funding his deputies would run out of bullets later this year and their cars would run out of fuel.

Yaroslavsky said Baca should focus on reducing his overtime expenses, which have increased by $50 million in the past four years, and workers' compensation, which rose 25 percent over last year.

``Focusing on those two accounts could bring the sheriff's budget into balance without releasing a single prisoner or reducing a single program,'' Yaroslavsky said.

The audit found that for most of the period from 1993 to 2000, the department had a surplus. But for 1997-98 and 2000-01, the sheriff ended the year with a deficit. Baca took office in December 1998, shortly after the death of Sheriff Sherman Block.

The audit found that the department has consistently overspent its salaries-and-benefits budget, but underspent on services and supplies.