County Would Lose Millions With Cutbacks

San Diego County will be giving up $18.6 million in outside funding over the next year if the Board of Supervisors approves cuts in mental health services.

The county also would owe other agencies $1.5 million if it closes four county parks, a move that would save about $560,000 next fiscal year.

The irony of losing more than $20 million in order to save $2.25 million in mental health and park costs over the next 15 months was not lost Tuesday on the 200 supporters of mental health programs who rallied outside the County Administration Center.

Nor was it lost on the officials who may be headed for that eventuality.

“The numbers are very clear. Our program is a 90% state-funded program,” said Areta Crowell, mental health director for the county. “I don’t think anybody believes that this is desirable, because they understand how much they’re losing by having to go this way.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Supervisor George Bailey agreed in an interview after the board put off action on the cuts until next Tuesday. “But we’ve gotta take the money from somewhere. You don’t write a check with nothing in the bank.”

Bailey was equally vocal at the meeting, when he suggested getting the county out of this hole by simply defying a court order and letting the county’s physical health program for the medically indigent, County Medical Services, die.

“I think we must draw the line,” Bailey said. “Personally, if it requires defying the court order and not paying for the CMS program, I’m willing to do that. Sometime I have to stand up and be counted.

“I realize we’re putting a terrific burden on one judge, but the problem, as I see it, is the decision has to be made to force something to happen.”

Bailey didn’t get any support for the idea of defying the court order, though he is hoping for some next Tuesday when a vote on the cuts is scheduled.

Before the supervisors was a proposal on ways to pay for about $10 million in expected CMS costs through June 30. Although the program has been without funding since Dec. 24, a judge last month issued an injunction ordering the county to continue it because patients would die without it. On Monday, Superior Court Judge Harrison Hollywood refused to order the state to pay for the continuation, but he will reconsider on Friday.

County administrators--bound by law not to engage in deficit spending--say that mental health service contracts, parks and other “discretionary” funds are the only place to make up the difference.

Even laying off county employees in other departments is not possible because of union contracts, they say.

Ending the mental health contracts would save $248,275 in general fund money in May and June, according to county figures. But $2.6 million of the programs’ cost comes from state and federal matching and grant funds that would be lost without that seed money.

For next fiscal year, the county would save $1.49 million of its own money on mental health programs, and lose about $16 million in federal and state grants.

The four county parks suggested for closure are Quail Botanical Gardens, Wilderness Gardens Preserve, and Lake Morena and Otay Lakes parks. Next fiscal year, that would save about $557,000 in operating costs.

However, the county would have to repay grant money it received to develop the parks--$1.2 million at Lake Morena and $132,300 at Quail gardens.

No one lobbied in support of those parks at Tuesday’s meeting, but the board did hear from dozens of clients and care givers at the residential and day treatment facilities that would be eliminated by the proposed cuts.

The programs provide more than 68,000 days of residential patient care, 82,000 outpatient visits to prescribe and monitor needed medication, and 115,000 patient visits to day-treatment centers by children and adults.

“You’re not throwing kids out of a program, you’re throwing them to the wolves,” Joy Allen of San Diego told the board.

Her 13-year-old son, Jimmy, also testified about how a day center called Venture had ended behavior problems so severe that he was even expelled from kindergarten.

Others testifying at the hearing told of repeated suicide attempts that county treatment programs had stopped, of being thrown in jail because of erratic behavior, of decades of “just trying to be normal.” They pleaded for the survival of the programs that keep them functioning.

Cutting off these patients’ access to psychiatric medications would be “no different than stopping insulin for a diabetic,” said Dr. Steven Ornish, a psychiatrist.