County Adopts Plan to Close Youth Camp if State Cuts Funds

Threatened by a massive cutback in state funds, the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday adopted a stopgap spending plan that would mean the closure of an area juvenile camp and a range of other alternative treatment programs in the fall unless $2.9 million can be found.

While prospects for restoring state monies now appear brighter, board Chairman Thomas F. Riley said the county faces an “acute” danger of having to scale back dramatically its efforts to turn around troubled youths.

The spending plan adopted by the board Tuesday provides full funding of $1.25 million to the offices of the district attorney and public defender and the Probation Department for juvenile operations through fiscal year 1989-90. These programs were mandated by the state a decade ago.

But the plan assures funding only for the first 3 months of the next fiscal year--beginning in September--for a range of community-based programs that rely in large part on state funds to shelter, treat and rehabilitate both juveniles and adults.

Beyond that time, the facilities would have to close without an infusion of new funds.

Most directly threatened is the Joplin Youth Center in Trabuco Canyon, a minimum-security county facility that provides housing, schooling and counseling for about 300 delinquents a year who have gotten into trouble with the law but are not considered a high enough risk for confinement in the state Youth Authority system.

Gov. George Deukmejian, blaming fiscal constraints, has proposed a 55% reduction in state aid funneled to the counties for use in juvenile rehabilitation and incarceration programs, as well as a wide range of other crime prevention and drug abuse efforts.

The proposed cutbacks have met with strong resistance from county officials and state law enforcement officials who charge that the governor is gutting a successful and cost-effective means of preventing crime and delinquency before the offenders become entrenched in the prison system.

Some state legislators, buoyed by the discovery last week of an unexpected $2.5-billion surplus in state revenues, are fighting to put back the $36.8 million cut by the governor, but prospects are uncertain.

The subvention funding--as the umbrella measure to finance the preventive and treatment programs is known--”is one of the programs that will be on the table when the governor sits down with the Legislature,” Cynthia Katz, assistant director of the state Department of Finance, said in an interview Wednesday.

“But how (the $2.5 billion surplus) is going to affect that particular program is anybody’s guess,” she said.

As a result, Orange County officials say they are planning for the worst, acting under the assumption that they will be short $2.9 million in state-provided juvenile and rehabilitation funds.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that the Legislature will restore funding, but we have to be realistic and face the fact that this money just might not be there,” said Michael Schumacher, chief probation officer for the county and head of an advisory panel that reviewed the funding shortfall.

For instance, the Probation Department’s intensive supervision program, under which the county’s three juvenile camps operate, would run out of funding in October and fall $1.8 million short of meeting its budget.

“You can’t nickel and dime that kind of money out of the budget,” Schumacher said.

The county does not seem able to pick up the funding slack through local monies, Schumacher said. And if other sources are not found by the fall, he added, the Joplin Youth Center would almost certainly close, largely because its budget most closely matched the expected shortfall. It is one of three such county camps.

Also on the potential chopping block locally are eight community-based programs that rely significantly on state funding through the county but will be funded only for the first 3 months of the next fiscal year.

These are: Turning Point Family Services, a drug abuse center in Garden Grove that serves several hundred teen-agers a year; the Halfway House in Anaheim, a jail-sentencing alternative that houses 24 adults at a time; the Emancipation Training Center in Fullerton, a residential program for troubled teen-agers; the Chicano Pintos in Garden Grove, offering job training, placement and other services for ex-offenders.

Also: the Odyssey Youth Shelter in Fullerton, the Amporo Youth Shelter in Garden Grove, the Casa Youth Shelter in Los Alamitos, and the CSP Youth Shelter in Laguna Beach, all of which provide emergency shelter and counseling for young runaways.

Kevin Meehan, executive director of the county’s Halfway House program, said in an interview that he is hopeful of staying in business but that this latest budget shortage poses “the most direct and immediate threat of our having absolutely zero funds.” The halfway house relies on state funding funneled through the county for 88% of its budget.

“In the absence of guaranteed funds by Sept. 1, the place is closed. And for the people who come though this place, that would be a real loss,” he said.