Money Woes Put Tehama County Near a Shutdown

Folks in this town with strong Old West roots refuse to cut more from county government, as others have across the state. When Tehama County goes broke in June, they have vowed a temporary shutdown.

County leaders said Tehama is so poor from running state-required programs and from lingering effects of California’s 1978 property tax revolt that some sheriff’s deputies have to drive old cars that cannot hit top speeds and officers are spread so thin at times that just one is patrolling the county’s 3,200 square miles.

Local officials said criminals, hoping that they will be safer from arrest, have migrated to Red Bluff, the county seat of this farming and lumber region, which is so openly proud of its conservative “cow town” image that the Tehama seal sports a bull’s head.

‘Bomb Waiting to Go Off’

Another problem caused by the financial crunch is “a bomb waiting to go off,” county Social Welfare Director Del Skillman said. Overburdened county social workers have time to probe only about half the child-abuse reports. “A case that doesn’t sound that bad could blow up and a child could get hurt or killed,” Skillman said.

While Tehama steels itself for what state and local officials believe would be the first county government shutdown in California history, essentially intended as a protest to attract attention to financial woes, other counties have chosen different courses in dealing with the plight.

To the north in Shasta County, supervisors closed all libraries and plan to shut down the county hospital.

In mountainous Sierra County, to the southeast, the cost of trials after a rash of nine murders drained coffers so much that supervisors were forced to lay off employees, Clerk-Recorder Sandra Loving said. Recent state legislation will channel additional money to the county to ease the burden, she said.

“Although those three counties on the brink of financial disaster are in the worst shape, about half the counties in California are having a tremendous problem balancing their budgets,” said Dan Wall, a tax and revenue expert for the County Supervisors Assn. of California.

Local officials said the budget crunch, particularly in rural counties, has worsened throughout the 1980s. Much of their money is devoured by ever-expanding services, mostly health, welfare and criminal-justice programs, which the state requires but only partially funds.

Revenue Limits From Prop. 13

Meanwhile, lingering effects of the 1978 property-tax slashing initiative, Proposition 13, continue to limit county government revenue, they said. Tax increases require a rare two-thirds vote on a county ballot.

In 1986, after year upon year of cutbacks and last-minute state bailouts without long-term solutions, Northern California counties threatened to secede and form a 51st state. The threat was only somewhat in jest.

Tehama Supervisor Burt Bundy said his county has an estimated $600,000 shortfall in a $30-million budget even after this year’s state bailouts but added that Tehama is no worse off than several others.

What sets Tehama apart is that the board of supervisors in the rural county of 46,000 people, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, has unanimously, though informally, adopted bold tactics.

“We’re the first, not the worst,” Bundy said of supervisors’ plans to keep all government programs operating as fully as possible until the money is gone near the close of the fiscal year June 30, then shut down all but, possibly, essential Sheriff’s Department services for up to perhaps two weeks.

“Why should we have to continue to crawl on our knees to Sacramento for funding? It’s going to take something like this to get lawmakers’ attention” and trigger long-term change, Bundy said.

No one seems certain if any agency would step in to fill the gap in services during a shutdown, or what legal dangers the county would face. “No county has ever done this before,” Wall said.

County employees, who would get an unpaid vacation, generally say they favor the plan as perhaps a means of an eventual pay raise. In their offices, bulletin boards are papered with job offers from outside government agencies offering more money than Tehama can afford.

Supervisors’ aide John Sims said workers and the public know the crisis is real. “We haven’t tried to play Chicken Little by yelling that the sky is falling, when it isn’t. It is falling,” he said.

Aging Buildings

Many county employees work in scattered, aging buildings such as abandoned schools where storage rooms and even closets have been converted to office space. Desks are a few feet apart. Some broken office machines sit defunct because repair costs are too high. Supplies, books, records and even confidential files are sometimes stacked nearly head-high in hallways.

Workers, in some cases, have had to become handymen because there is no money to hire outside help. In the probation department, Assistant Probation Officer Hollis Huckleberry says he has installed electrical wiring and works on cars.

The conditions have eroded morale, bosses said.

Tehama closed eight of 11 library branches, cutting staff from 20 to six; cannot afford to repair its termite-damaged community hall, which has been closed; no longer contributes general fund money to bolster road repairs, and has virtually halted capital-improvement projects and building maintenance.

California adopted a law in the early 1970s requiring the state to reimburse counties for required programs, but local officials say that there are many loopholes in the program and that reimbursements sometimes take years.

County officials throughout the state say generally that their most critical problem is in the area of criminal justice, which includes courts and county jails, because the state does not pay the bulk of costs.

Some Relief for Courts

Some relief will come in the form of a $330-million measure the state approved this year. It will fund local trial courts and bolster the number of judges in 1988.

In Tehama, about $8 million of the county’s budget is earmarked for criminal justice this year.

The county jail was so hot and crowded that a superior court judge ordered refurbishing of the air-conditioning system and limited the number of inmates who could be housed there.

Tehama will spend nearly $400,000 this year to keep an average of 30 prisoners in counties up to 230 miles away, Undersheriff Terry Boots said. Up to three deputies who could be on patrol instead are often transporting inmates.

Some deputies are driving patrol cars that have logged in excess of 140,000 miles--60% more than the California Highway Patrol allows before retiring its cars, Boots said. The older cars shake at top speeds, forcing officers to slow down even during pursuits and life-and-death emergencies.

“There have been times when deputies have been given direction not to drive a car on Code 3 (red lights and siren) chases,” Boots said.

Nine Deputies on Patrol

Up to nine deputies, working three shifts a day, patrol the county. “But at times, we have only one car on patrol in this entire county, as incredible as that may seem,” he said.

While the department’s budget has remained virtually at the same level for five years, criminal and civil cases have increased dramatically. The undersheriff estimates that 20 additional deputies are needed just to regain the balance between the workload and staff of eight years ago.

Officials in California counties say welfare is another big financial burden, even though the state and federal governments cover about 90% of costs.

Tehama officials say just their 10% share of the estimated $15-million welfare cost this year is a major financial drain.

Some of the welfare recipients have migrated from big cities because they figure their benefits will go further in the rural setting, Bundy said, adding that the county’s welfare caseload has doubled to 1,600 since 1980.

Meanwhile, Skillman said his small staff of overworked investigators in the Welfare Department has time to look into only about half the 1,200 reports annually of child abuse. Investigators concentrate mostly on the cases in which there appears to be immediate danger to children or there are repeated reports, he says.