Choice Among Charities : Environmental fund should be an option for county employees

Los Angeles County supervisors are to vote Tuesday on a proposal to add three community support organizations to a payroll deduction program.

The twaddle that passes for analysis in one section of the proposal may leave them choking with laughter. They should steel themselves to vote, however, because buried in the twaddle is an important issue.

Four groups applied in May for a place on the roster from which about 85,000 county employees may select groups to which they want to give money. One is the Environmental Federation of California, a nonprofit organization that distributes payroll deductions to environmental groups.

Last month, Richard B. Dixon, the county’s chief administrative officer, decided that three charities meet the county’s criteria. They are the Asian Pacific Community Fund, the United Latino Fund and the Los Angeles Women’s Foundation. They do not meet some technical standards for qualifying, such as size of budget, he said, but they do meet the overall test of providing “a broad range of health and human services” and should be allowed on the roster for a three-year test.

The environmental federation, he ruled, does not qualify because it collects money for groups that promote a single cause--”the environment.”

That’s what he wrote.

Is oxygen a contribution to health and human care? Trees generate oxygen and one of the federation’s clients is the organization Treepeople, which promotes (with great success) planting of trees. Are clean air, clean beaches and clean drinking water involved in health? All are promoted by one or more of the federation’s clients.

The board should pull itself together when Dixon’s memorandum has been read, rescue this important issue from the nonsense and add the environmental federation to its list.