Budget Hearings Shift Emphasis to Plight of Homeless Mentally Ill

In the county’s crowded jails, “we will serve 21 million meals in the coming year,” Sheriff Sherman Block told the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The eight-figure statistic illustrates both the sheriff’s need for more money to handle more inmates, and something of the budget problems facing the supervisors this year. In four days of hearings in the last week, Block was one of several influential people, ranging from Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, arguing for more money for the poor, to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, also seeking additional funds for law enforcement, who made their cases before the supervisors.

The nature of the requests, and the responses by the supervisors, portray a county government overwhelmed with unmet needs of the poor and the mentally ill and a jail system that reports 250,000 new bookings a year, has about 1 million inmate sick calls annually and runs a bus system transporting 6,500 prisoners a day.

Supervisors have been confronted with requests to relieve massive problems before; the difference this time is that certain problems are receiving more attention than before.

In the past, law enforcement was topic No. 1 on a board dominated 3 to 2 by conservatives. But this year, more than the usual attention is being paid to pressing concerns of physical and mental illness of the poor, brought home each day to the supervisors and their constituents by the growing number of homeless, many of them mentally ill, seen throughout the county.

As usual in these annual sessions, which continued Wednesday, the relaxed atmosphere in the supervisors’ hearing room gave no hint of the immensity of the problems. Coats were on hangers. The supervisors sipped coffee as they went over the figures. They addressed powerful county officials by their first names in a casual way. It is an annual event. Early each summer, supervisors hold hearings on the budget prepared by the county administrative officer, James C. Hankla. Then, in July, the supervisors make additions or subtractions to the document and approve it.

The supervisors have little leeway in their decision making. Income is fixed, coming from the property tax, state funds and a few other sources. Expenses are also pretty much fixed. State law requires counties to run the courts, hospitals for the poor, mental health clinics and the jails--the high-expense facilities that deal with the county’s social problems.

This year is no exception. Hankla proposed a $6.9-billion budget that allocates more money for additional jail personnel and for Reiner’s efforts against pollution, child abuse, narcotics and juvenile crime.

Block, citing statistics to emphasize the size of the job facing him, asked for $113 million more, $54 million of it through the sale of bonds for expansion of the Sheriff’s Department communications system. And he seeks $1.8 million more to improve the jail food-delivery system as part of a $20.4-million request for additional jail personnel.

Reiner wants $15.6 million more, saying that he needs more trial lawyers, automated office equipment and funds for his program dealing with hard-core gangs. “The Uzi (machine gun) is becoming as common on the streets as the ghetto blaster (radio),” he said.

With one exception, concern for the unfortunate has not been a dominant theme. Although welfare case loads are growing, Hankla recommended a reduction of jobs in the Department of Public Social Services. And the board at this point does not seem inclined to heed Mahony’s plea to increase the $228-a-month subsistence payment the county makes to poor people who are not eligible for other programs. Many of these 39,000 General Relief recipients are homeless.

The exception is the mentally ill, seemingly for a couple of reasons. The homeless mentally ill in the downtown area are a worry to corporate executives headquarted there, some of whom said as much during one of the budget hearings this week. And the middle class appears increasingly concerned with hard-to-cure mental illnesses afflicting their families and requiring county-assisted care.

The new priority for mental health was reflected by the friendly reception during the hearings that greeted Brooklyn-accented Roberto Quiroz, the county’s mental health director.

Although spending for mental health has increased in recent years, Hankla recommended a $6.7-million reduction this year. That is because state payments to the county Department of Health Services are expected to drop this year, Hankla said, making it impossible for the health department to make the $6.7-million fund transfer to the mental health department.

But Quiroz argued against cuts, citing growing needs and serious consequences.

“That would impact in a very negative way on mental health services,” he said, requiring a 4.3% reduction in services to the mentally ill.

To illustrate his point, Quiroz handed the supervisors a paper showing how services would have to be cut in mental health clinics in each of the five supervisorial districts. And, judging from the examples, the middle class, as well as the poor, would be affected.

Most of these cuts would be to publicly and privately operated centers that provide day care to the mentally ill. That has become a key part of public care for the mentally ill since a decision was made by the state several years ago to reduce numbers of patients in state mental hospitals and to attempt to treat them in their communities. The shortage of community facilities, experts say, is one reason for the large number of mentally ill wandering the streets.

For example, Quiroz reported that the cuts would result in a $76,695 reduction in county payments to the clinic at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, which provides in-patient as well as day-care treatment. The Didi Hirsch facility on Los Angeles’ Westside, another longtime provider to many income levels, would lose $58,314 in 1986-87 for day care and outreach programs, which attempt to persuade the mentally ill to come in for treatment. The biggest loser would be the biggest facility, County-USC Medical Center, the huge county hospital just east of downtown that treats some of the county’s poorest residents. It would lose $653,761.

Arguments Heeded

Quiroz’s arguments were not ignored. Hankla said his staff and Quiroz’s would discuss ways of giving mental health more money.

That probably can be done. By the time the supervisors vote on the budget, funds are shifted around so that the most pressing and politically important requests can be met.

But, county officials said, such measures will not deal with the long-term problems presented at the hearings--growing prison populations and more and more physically and mentally ill.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, recalling a theme of his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, said a crackdown on illegal immigration would reduce county expenses and make more money available. Supervisor Ed Edelman proposed that county officials mount a statewide initiative campaign to raise beer, liquor and wine taxes.

Only Edelman voiced support for that idea. Reiner, asked by Edelman for support, was not enthusiastic. The district attorney, ambitious to run for statewide office, clearly did not want to be associated with such a potentially unpopular tax proposal. It is not useful, he said, to “poke at windmills.”

Thus the stage was set for a replay of the budget event, same time next year.