New Taxes for Mental Care Sought : Social services: County supervisors want a 5% levy on utility bills and a higher bed tax. A plan for cities to pay another $30 million appears doomed.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, faced with the prospect of drastically cutting mental health services, Tuesday took the first step in trying to offset the cuts with $8 million in new taxes on utilities and motel and hotel rooms.

In addition, the supervisors decided to ask the county’s municipalities for another $30 million to bolster county-run health and mental health programs, but less than two hours after the meeting, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley sharply rejected the request.

Without additional money the board can only balance the mental health budget by imposing $41.9 million in cuts of mental health clinics and other services, leaving a bare-bones system capable of responding only to the most seriously ill.

The supervisors asked the county counsel to draft ordinances imposing a 5% utility users tax on gas and electric bills and raising the motel/hotel room tax from 10% to 12%. Both measures would apply only to residents and businesses in the unincorporated areas.

Their prospects of getting money from the cities appeared slim after Bradley’s rebuff.

“The city has had to step forward in recent years to support child care and homeless services because the county was not fulfilling its responsibilities,” the mayor said in a statement released by his press secretary, Bill Chandler. “The county has already proven its lack of concern for those most in need, so there is no proof that these additional tax increment funds would be used wisely at all.”

Long Beach also was cool to the idea.

“I give them an A for creativity,” said John Shirey, Long Beach’s assistant city manager. The city’s first priority is to use the money to repay $65 million that the redevelopment agency borrowed from the city. “The board will have to get in line for our tax increment monies,” he said.

Specifically, the supervisors want cities to turn over 20% of so-called tax increment funds--additional tax money realized from the construction of valuable office buildings and other projects in the redevelopment of formerly blighted areas.

The bailout plan involving the cities and the new tax proposals joins a revenue-shifting plan already before the supervisors as options for preserving mental health services.

The revenue-shifting plan, proposed a week ago by Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon, would squeeze about $15 million for mental health from the budgets of other county departments.

But supervisors were discouraged Tuesday by testimony from representatives of the Sheriff’s and Probation and Parole departments about the effect of this effort on their programs.

Chief Probation Officer Barry J. Nidorf said he could not cut $3.4 million--the amount ordered by Dixon--from his $220-million budget without closing programs that the board ordered him to launch. Among these would be a program of supervision for newly released, high-risk felons.

The cuts would “dramatically affect recidivism,” Nidorf said. “We are going to have more crime on the streets.”

Assistant Sheriff J. L. Harper also painted a dire picture of the effect of cuts to his department as well as to mental health services. The latter, he said, will result in more “hostage situations, barricade situations, suicides and suicide attempts.” With these additional burdens plus an increase in incidents of disruptive or dangerous behavior by the untended mentally ill, Harper said, the department will have fewer deputies to deal with traditional crime.

“We are just creating a revolving door,” said Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who shortly afterward unveiled his tax and city assistance proposals.

Antonovich said later he would not support cuts to other departments. Supervisor Pete Schabarum, on the other hand, said he would go for Dixon’s countywide belt-tightening plan, but would not support new taxes.

Advocates for the mentally ill were nonetheless encouraged by the supervisors’ decision to again delay what could be a drastic $41.9 million in cuts to mental health services and the abandonment of 27,000 of 52,000 patients currently receiving care.

“We are still dangling over the edge,” said Anthony W. Harris, executive director of the Assn. of Community Mental Health Agencies, whose members work under contract to the county Department of Mental Health. But that, he and others said, is better than working under orders to shut down programs, lay off staff and turn patients away.

Tuesday’s meeting was the longest and most spirited of the three devoted to the problem of major shortfalls in the health budgets, resulting from the failure of the Proposition 134 alcoholic beverages tax. Besides the revenue shortfall for mental health, the county is faced with a court order that the supervisors say requires $19 million more for the Department of Public Health Services to maintain adequate levels of care at county hospitals and health centers.

At one point, Schabarum called Supervisor Ed Edelman a socialist for proposing a license fee on businesses in the unincorporated areas that would tax gross revenues at 1% to 1.25%. Only Kenneth Hahn supported the idea. Edelman, nevertheless, has asked that such an ordinance be drawn for a formal vote next Tuesday.

Antonovich’s proposals had better luck, but he, too, was feeling the pressure of the situation. Even before Bradley turned down the idea of donating city tax revenues to the health cause, Atonovich said that if Los Angeles did not cooperate he would punish the city by blocking its effort to raise the $750-million ceiling on tax increment monies for exclusive city use.

After the ceiling is reached-- probably in the next two years--the county is scheduled to receive 47% of the money while the city splits the remainder with the school district. The city wants the supervisors to agree to a ceiling of $5 billion, according to Mary Jung of the county administrative office.

Schabarum, as he has in previous meetings, once again blasted the state for failing to meet statutory obligations to fund mental health services. At one point, he testily interrupted the testimony of a mental health clinic administrator to admonish him for suggesting that the supervisors would be responsible for the increases in crime and homelessness that would result from mental health service cuts.

“The people will pay one way or another,” said Carl McCraven, executive director of Hillview Mental Health Center.

“And where were you and where was everyone else when the game was in Sacramento?” Schabarum demanded.

Also testifying against the mental health cuts was actor Nicholas Cage. He said cutting such programs while Los Angeles proposes to spend $5 million for a new theater downtown strikes him as insane.