POLITICIAN WATCH : Calcutta Shell Game

For four years, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has paid private lawyers up to $325 an hour to fight against more welfare benefits for the homeless. Yet a homeless person who can manage to meet county standards for the general relief welfare program receives only $312 a month . This illogical and mean-spirited fight may be coming to end.

As soon as Supervisor Gloria Molina took office last month, she joined with Supervisors Ed Edelman and Kenneth Hahn to direct county lawyers to begin settlement talks with lawyers working for the homeless. One key issue is whether the county has the right to halt general relief aid to the homeless for 60 days as a penalty for failing to pass a monthly test. The test is designed to minimize cheating, the county says. But it appears that the test and other strict regulations are really designed to throw up a roadblock so formidable that needy people just give up and go back to the streets. That way, there are fewer homeless that the county has to help. That’s no solution, because the city or others must take up the slack. The county’s homeless policy has been appropriately tagged the “Calcutta method.”

The right approach is to come up with programs that will help the homeless so that they no longer need general relief benefits. That’s not accomplished through a system that discourages them from getting what little help there is available. The settlement talks are an encouraging sign that the county finally wants to move from being part of the problem to part of the solution.