County Social Service Cuts Assailed : Critics See Danger in Reduction of Health Care for Poor

A coalition of civic and community leaders lashed out Thursday at San Diego County government’s decision to cut back on a wide array of health and social services.

Also under attack was a fundamental change the county has made in the way it allocates public funds to private, nonprofit agencies--a change one businessman predicted would create a “bush league” system for delivering essential services to the poor.

The charges came at a news conference attended by about 150 people, a dozen of whom spoke during an hourlong presentation orchestrated by Community Congress of San Diego.

“San Diego wants to be a world-class city,” said Jim van de Water, an executive with Kaiser Development Co. “It can’t be if it takes a bush-league approach to providing social services.”

Jess Haro, Chicano Federation board chairman, said he feared that services now provided through private agencies would become the responsibility of county employees.

“The nonprofit agencies have been more effective, more efficient and more sensitive to the needs of people who have come to them” than the county would be, Haro said.

The county has been struggling most of this year with how best to deal with the pending loss of $12 million in federal revenue sharing money, about $7 million of which was used to finance more than 60 health and social service agencies.

The Board of Supervisors decided in July to fund the agencies at their 1984-85 levels until December, when the federal money is expected to run out. At that time, some of the programs will have their financing reduced and others will lose it completely.

From now on, however, rather than routinely allocating a set amount of money to the agencies each year, the board will first decide what services are needed, then rank them in order of priority, and then accept bids from anyone who can provide those services. Under the new system, the county expects to spend less than half of what it has for the services in the past.

But community activists and agency leaders contend that the cuts will backfire, forcing the county to spend more in the long run to help people who could have been aided earlier.

They argue that sick people who go without the health care now provided at community clinics may wind up in the emergency room at UC San Diego Medical Center, and troubled youths who don’t get counseling from private agencies could later burden the county-funded courts or jail systems.