Board to Study Future of 13 Mental Centers

Los Angeles County officials hope that a projected increase in property tax revenue can keep the doors open at 13 mental health outpatient clinics targeted for closure in a budget squeeze, but their fate still may rest in Sacramento.

The Board of Supervisors will begin deliberations today on whether to use the windfall to save mental health clinics that are scheduled to begin closing next week if a current court challenge fails.

Lawyers for indigent mentally ill patients won a temporary restraining order 10 days ago blocking the Department of Mental Health from closing the first three of 13 targeted clinics, which treat 20,000 patients. There are more than 40 such clinics countywide.

How to spend the extra tax money would be up to the supervisors, and Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said Monday, “It would be wrong to shut down mental health clinics when we have the money to keep them open.”

He added that the highest priority for the new revenues should go to the mentally ill--”the forgotten people in our society.”

Added revenues for the county are anticipated from estimates made by Assessor John J. Lynch, who recently unveiled a tax roll for the current fiscal year that includes a record $346 billion in property values. He said the county’s share of $187 million in property taxes could be $50 million more than originally projected, although Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon said a preliminary analysis puts the figure lower, at $10 million to $15 million.

Even the lesser amount, Dixon said, could restore much of the mental health funding. However, Dixon said, none of this discretionary spending will be possible unless the Legislature agrees to relieve counties of the financial burden of maintaining Superior Courts, a matter still unresolved in Sacramento.

The trial-court funding is needed to balance an already precarious county budget, Dixon said. If the county fails to receive those funds, other programs--in addition to mental health--would be threatened, including such higher priority concerns as health service programs, children’s services and public safety.

“The timing is such that we may have to make some hair-trigger decisions,” Dixon said, between now and when legislators and the governor make their decisions, which could be sometime next month.

County officials hope to avoid those kinds of political choices by pushing through a financing package in Sacramento that would provide an alternative if a full year of trial-court funding is not approved.

Compromise Plan

Under a compromise plan backed by the County Supervisors Assn., the state Chamber of Commerce, business groups and others, money could be found for counties by changing state bank and corporation laws to comply with federal tax changes and by speeding up the collection of sales and certain corporation taxes, according to proponents.

Supporters contend that those changes would enable the state to provide $170 million for half a year of trial court funding--to go along with the $190-million Gov. George Deukmejian has already set aside for trial courts--and provide another $80 million for programs such as emergency medical services, health care and mental health.

Meanwhile, uncertainty over how much money will be available is already disrupting the care system.

Officials at some of the threatened clinics say some patients have left for other clinics miles away or added to the overcrowding at local hospital emergency rooms or have simply stopped seeking treatment.

“We have had a large drop-off of patients already, and that has continued unabated,” said Dr. Joel Foxman, director of the Coastal Community Mental Health Center in Carson. “You can’t turn a faucet on and off, on and off.”

Patients and workers at the targeted clinics had won a reprieve when a Superior Court judge blocked the closing of the first three clinics--San Pedro Mental Health Center, Wilmington Mental Health Center and the outpatient clinic at the Hubert H. Humphrey Comprehensive Health Center--until a further hearing is held on Monday.

But April Drew, a psychotherapist at the Hubert Humphrey center in South-Central Los Angeles, said department officials have told staff members that they are ready to shut the doors to the clinic if the county wins next week’s court case.

“It’s confusing for me,” she said. “And it certainly is much more confusing for the clients. They feel like volleyballs in all this.”