Severe Cutbacks Proposed in State’s Health Programs : Budget: Monitoring for birth defects, safe drinking water program and tumor registry would be affected in effort to cut costs.

Health officials are considering making a 40% cut in the state’s birth-defects monitoring program, chopping 30% from its cancer-tracking tumor registry and drastically reducing the staff that runs the safe drinking water program, according to an internal Wilson Administration memorandum.

Officials inside and outside the Administration say the proposed cuts would severely hamper the programs involved. They indicated that a fight was going on to save the programs among advisers to Gov. Pete Wilson, whose recent budget cuts triggered the proposed reductions.

The memo clearly shows a desire by newly appointed Department of Health Services Director Molly Joel Coye to protect health programs such as Medi-Cal that provide services directly to recipients, even if it means disproportionate cuts in other programs.

Some of the programs on the target list, such as the birth-defects monitoring program, are relatively new. Begun in 1982, the program recently completed its final expansion into Los Angeles County, where it collects data on babies born with birth defects. The proposed cut comes when the Republican governor is undertaking a high-visibility campaign to increase funding for prenatal programs.

Ronald Joseph, chief deputy director of health services, said the proposals are being debated privately within the Administration.

“There are no final decisions at this time,” Joseph said. “We are looking at a whole range of very tough choices. Our (initial) choices were to produce a minimum impact on direct services, to both providers and recipients. As a result there were other areas which had to take disproportionately higher cuts.”

The memo, written during the summer by Coye and leaked to The Times by critics of the cuts, appears to be a refinement of a memo obtained by The Times in June, when state health officials were considering cutting the cancer registry by half, or even eliminating it. The registry program, begun in 1985, is intended to help unravel the causes of cancer by collecting and analyzing data on its occurrence in California.

The most recent memo is unusually candid in discussing effects of the proposed budget reductions. It acknowledges that the cuts in the cancer registry, known formally as the California Tumor Registry, and birth-defects monitoring program “are likely to generate much public concern.”

The memo adds, “These are disproportionate reductions, and the department will have to justify why these programs have apparently less public health priority relative to other public health programs. These cuts may be viewed as a lack of commitment to environmental concerns as both of these programs were largely justified to monitor the human effects of exposure to environmental health hazards.”

Administration officials called the cuts necessary to meet spending reductions agreed to by Wilson and the Legislature. According to the department, health services is required to trim $33.3 million from its general operations budget of $174 million.

Russell S. Gould, secretary of the Health and Welfare Agency, said, “When you are talking about a 20% cut within departments, people are kidding themselves if they don’t think it’s going to affect public health.”

Other proposed cuts include chopping 30 positions from food testing and drinking water programs run by the Department of Health Services. “These reductions will substantially delay the adoption of drinking water standards required by state and federal law,” the memo says. It adds that the cuts could bring sanctions from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, slow the evaluation of contaminants in drinking water and seriously delay the testing of 8,000 processed food samples for pesticide residues, chemicals, microbes and other contaminants.

The memo also proposes a cut of $2.8 million, or 54 positions, in laboratory programs. Should the cut stand, the memo says, it “will reduce our ability to test samples in a variety of disease control, food and water testing, air sampling, virus identification . . . areas.”

Sharen Muraoka, a spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society, said a 30% cut in the California Tumor Registry “would jeopardize the integrity of the whole program.”

“We find the actions at odds with the governor’s position of working to bolster prevention programs to avoid costs down the line, “ Muraoka said.

Katherine L. Kneer, a lobbyist for the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, which administers the birth-defects monitoring program, said earlier budget cuts reduced the program 7%, and a 40% cut will eliminate data collection services in some counties.