Mental Health Gets Reprieve in County’s $10.2-Billion Budget : Spending: Supervisors finalize plan for coming year. But clinics’ future rests on a November ballot measure.

Los Angeles County’s strained mental health system won a temporary reprieve from massive state-funding cutbacks Tuesday as the Board of Supervisors finalized a $10.2-billion budget for the coming year.

In what Supervisor Ed Edelman conceded was a “risky assumption,” the supervisors deferred closure of several mental health clinics and other service cutbacks in hopes that a November ballot measure to raise alcoholic beverage taxes would be approved by voters and bail out the beleaguered system.

Mental health officials, while pleased, warned that the thousands of homeless people, abused children and severely mentally ill who rely on the county network are not out of the woods. If the ballot measure, Proposition 134, is rejected by voters and other efforts to restore state funding fail, the supervisors would be forced to slash deeply into mental health programs later this year.

“It gives us a chance to dig a super grave, but it also gives us a chance to come out OK,” said Richard Van Horn, head of the county Mental Health Assn., an advocacy group.

The prospect of huge mental health services cuts emerged as the major issue in county budget deliberations after Gov. George Deukmejian, faced with budget problems of his own, slashed state funding and left the county-run mental health system with a $39-million deficit.

After disposing of the mental health issue, the supervisors moved quickly through a series of budget-juggling actions that, among other things, set aside $1 million for each of the five supervisors to dole out to unspecified “high priority” projects in their own districts.

The board also restored most of the $81 million in threatened budget cuts to the county hospitals and health clinics that serve the poor.

Overall, the budget is up 5.6% from last year.

Many departments had their spending requests trimmed. Spared from the knife was the Sheriff’s Department, which will add 100 deputies, and the Fire Department, which will add several new fire stations and paramedic units in fast-growing suburban areas. Those departments, rather than social services, have been the top priority of the board’s conservative majority in recent years.

Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon defended the allocations to the emergency service departments, noting that crime is on the rise, jails are overcrowded, and the county is in a fourth year of drought.

Among the items the conservative majority did not fully fund was a $9.6-million package of services for AIDS victims. The board has been the target of sometimes unruly demonstrations by critics who charge that the supervisors have failed to address the AIDS epidemic.

The board majority on Tuesday allocated $3 million to AIDS home health care, but declined to earmark funds for a centerpiece of the funding package sought by AIDS activists. That $5-million program would have provided increased medical care to tens of thousands of patients who have tested positive for the HIV virus to try to delay the onset of the disease.

Board Chairman Pete Schabarum, still piqued by recent demonstrations in front of the board by AIDS activists, said Tuesday: “I’ll be damned if I’m going to step up (and support the full AIDS package) if you have those idiots come in here and do that rain dance they do.”

Dave Johnson, the city of Los Angeles’ AIDS coordinator and a leader in the campaign for increased funding, said Schabarum’s comments were “callous and insensitive.” He added that “tens of thousands of people will die” without the early intervention program.