Groups Say Ethnic Shifts Increase Need for Human Relations Panel : Budget: Supervisors are leaning toward merging the commission with one on status of women to save money.

They spoke in English, Spanish, and Korean. Some were angry, others conciliatory. But their message Tuesday to the County Board of Supervisors was the same: Save the Human Relations Commission.

Representatives of an organized labor council, the local NAACP, gay and lesbian groups, elderly Korean-Americans, high school students, an Arab-American group and Latino organizations were among those who urged the board to fully fund the commission in the coming budget.

After the meeting, many of those same people staged a rally and vigil for the commission in the Civic Center Plaza.

With scores of supporters cramming the board meeting room, more than a dozen people rose to speak, each urging that the supervisors retain the 20-year-old commission, which was targeted for elimination by the county administrative office in its proposed 1991-92 budget.

That budget proposal, adopted by the supervisors in principle last month, returns to the board next week for final approval.

“During these times of powerful change in the ethnic makeup of Orange County, the Human Relations Commission is needed more than ever,” one of the speakers told the supervisors. “All of us here feel that one ounce of prevention today is worth a lot of money later.”

Board members--who already are leaning in favor of a controversial plan to save the commission but only by cutting its budget and merging it with the Commission on the Status of Women--sat quietly through most of the presentation.

The supervisors, however, angrily rejected suggestions that their preliminary approval of the plan to cut the commissions reflected their indifference to the work of the two panels.

The trouble, they said, is money: The county government entered its budget hearings with a projected shortfall of $67.7 million. Only a combination of new revenue, program cuts and layoffs have allowed them to close that gap.

“We’re at the stage in county government where we’re going to have to learn how to govern differently,” said Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder. Deciding to fund the Human Relations Commission would mean that board members would have to “take it away from law enforcement, take it away from drugs, take it away from health care.”

Supporters of the commission, however, argued that eliminating the organization would end up costing the county by fueling racial tensions, increasing the demands on law enforcement and adding to the county’s social woes.

When Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez asked whether backers of the Human Relations Commission would agree to help raise private money to support its work, several members of the audience enthusiastically said they would.

Others balked.

“I remind respectfully the board that it is not our responsibility to raise the funds for the Human Relations Commission,” said Amin David, who was the first person ever to chair the panel. “We pay enough funds through our taxes.”

That brought applause from the audience, but a sharp retort from Vasquez.

“In the face of a very dire fiscal situation, we are simply inviting you to be a partner in this endeavor,” the board chairman said. “I don’t think that’s an unfair request.”

While most of the speakers said they preferred to see the supervisors retain full funding for the commission, which has an annual budget of about $307,000, some said they would accept a compromise being floated by Wieder. Under that plan, the Commission on the Status of Women would be folded into the larger Human Relations Commission, and the new panel would receive roughly $200,000.

The local chapter of the NAACP has voted to endorse that compromise, and a few other speakers said they would reluctantly back it as well.

“We’d rather save both the commissions at their full funding,” David said after the board meeting. “But do you injure the baby or do you kill it? We need to save something, so I guess the idea has merit.”