County Frees Funding for Hope in Youth Program : Social services: The church-backed anti-gang plan will get $2.9 million. The money was approved months ago but was held up by the budget crunch.

Breaking a bureaucratic logjam that had existed for nearly a year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to release $2.9 million in county funds that will set in motion an ambitious, church-backed anti-gang program.

The vote removed the final hurdle to implementing the Hope in Youth program, which now becomes the largest anti-gang program in the county. The City of Los Angeles had pledged $2.5 million for the program but had made release of its funds contingent on the county’s allocation. The state of California has also approved about $2 million for the program.

Hope in Youth leaders say they will begin hiring and training gang workers with the goal of putting teams of workers on the street by January.

“This is a great victory,” the Rev. E. Lynn Brown, bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, shouted to about 200 Hope in Youth supporters who had gathered at the Hall of Administration.

“It’s going to be a tough job, but this is a comprehensive program that is (based in) the communities and all of us look forward to their success,” Supervisor Gloria Molina, who sponsored the funding motion, told the supporters.

Hope in Youth is designed to reach youngsters who are attracted to gang activities but who have not yet become rooted in gang life. The program would send teams of social workers, gang experts and teachers into some of Los Angeles County’s most troubled neighborhoods to counsel young people and their parents with the goal of helping them overcome family and social problems that often lead to hard-core gang membership.

The program has not been without controversy. Many critics have questioned spending the limited public funds available for anti-gang efforts on an untested program headed by religious leaders with little expertise in the field.

Others have raised the issue of whether government funds should be committed to a project so closely aligned with churches.

Hope in Youth leaders brush aside such criticism, insisting that their effort has won broad-based community support and pledging a willingness to work with other anti-gang programs, such as the more established Community Youth Gang Services.

“We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” said Lou Negrete, a Hope in Youth chairman who is also a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Los Angeles. “We’ve gotten good feedback from other community organizations and government agencies. People are in the mood to collaborate. But now (that) we’re going to be under close scrutiny from everybody, we’re going to have to come through and I’m convinced we will.”

The Hope in Youth campaign was created in 1992 by a coalition of religious and community organizations that include ranking Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony adopted the project as a key plank in his social agenda for the city, becoming chairman of the Hope in Youth coordinating committee and lending instant cachet to the cause.

Yet the program had languished for nearly a year as organizers sought to secure financial help from state and local governments, with each entity offering praise but backing away from releasing program funds until the other had done so.

The county’s floundering fiscal situation proved a further obstacle, with supervisors shifting the $2.9 million pledged to Hope in Youth to another fund to keep open 19 probation camps for juvenile offenders.

Subsequently, Hope in Youth backers, including Mahony, called a meeting with the county’s chief administrative officer to try to iron out the issues.

The logjam was eased recently when newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan--a longtime Mahony confidante who had supported the program during his campaign--signed a contract creating a trust account to fund the program, followed by Gov. Pete Wilson approving the $2.4 million from the state.

Hope in Youth leaders say commitment of the public money will make it easier to obtain matching grants from the private sector. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has pledged to help secure $5 million in federal funds, Negrete said.