WACHS BLASTS STATE FOR NOT TAKING CARE OF VANDALIZED CEMETERY.

Byline: Stacy Finz Daily News Staff Writer

The state is shirking its responsibility to secure and care for an abandoned Tujunga cemetery that recently was desecrated by vandals, city officials said Thursday.

``They're passing the buck,'' said Arline DeSanctis, chief field deputy for City Council member Joel Wachs.

In the last two days, Wachs' office has had the task of cleaning up the mess of seven vandalized caskets that were pried from a mausoleum between Oct. 30 and Nov. 12 at the Hills of Peace cemetery. Wachs has installed a night security guard at the graveyard, also known as Verdugo Hills, but Wachs said this should not be the duty of the city.

The vandalism, which included standing a corpse against its crypt wall and sticking a cigarette in its mouth, is the latest in a string of problems at the Hills of Peace cemetery on Parsons Trail.

State and city officials have been fighting for years over who has responsibility for the cemetery, which closed in 1976.

``The city doesn't own the cemetery, and we're not in the business of managing cemeteries,'' DeSanctis said. ``The state needs to honor its responsibility.''

But state officials maintain that they don't have jurisdiction over the cemetery, abandoned by its owners in 1978. The cemetery lost its license two years before that.

Peter Brightbill, policy chief for the cemetery program in the Department of Consumer Affairs, said the state oversees money set aside for upkeep on the graveyard but is not responsible for implementing improvements.

``We have offered to transfer the endowment fund to a cemetery authority in Los Angeles,'' Brightbill said Thursday. ``But we don't have the authority to run the cemetery.''

DeSanctis said the city is investigating how it can force the state to take over the rundown graveyard.

``You can't treat people who've been buried that way, in that disrespectful way,'' Wachs told reporters at a press conference Thursday.

``So we're going to do what we can. I'm meeting with the mayor at noon today. We're going to be calling the governor, and we're going to get this resolved,'' Wachs said.

Arlene Herrera, whose father was buried in the Tujunga cemetery in 1967, said disgruntled citizens had been starting to make headway with the now defunct State Cemetery Board to get improvements to the graveyard. The board was disbanded in January, after legislation transferred its duties to the Department of Consumer Affairs.

``I'm just furious that the state is now dumping upkeep of the cemetery into the hands of the city,'' Herrera said.

Residents have asked for round-the-clock security at the cemetery, where nearly 3,000 graves are overrun with brush and weeds. They have said the graveyard is a magnet for drug use, vandalism and illegal dumping.

Heavy winter rains unearthed coffins and washed bodies into the yards of canyon houses in 1978.