County Proposes SWAT Team Cut, Work Furloughs

Proposing another round of sharp cuts to cope with their latest budget deficit, county administrators Monday targeted the Sheriff’s Department SWAT team and said they would ask labor unions to agree to weeklong mandatory work furloughs for every county employee.

In all, county officials suggested $20 million in specific program cuts and offered the supervisors other options, such as the work furlough, that could save $9.3 million more.

The cutbacks are an attempt to narrow the county’s $32-million budget gap, the third fiscal crisis of the budget year that began July 1.

In October, the supervisors addressed a $30-million deficit in their $1.9-billion budget with a series of cutbacks and onetime expenditures. Last month, upon learning they would still fall another $15.6 million short, they took similar action.

But with property tax revenue coming in below predictions and state funding levels unclear because of Sacramento’s financial woes, the county finds itself with another deficit.

Monday’s proposals would cut off welfare payments to able-bodied adults, reduce each department’s budget by 2%, and slice a wide range of services in physical health, mental health, social services, parks, animal control, child support revenue recovery and the medical examiner’s office.

Eliminating the sheriff’s SWAT team, which escaped budget cuts in October, would save $1 million, according to the report from Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey.

The proposal suggests no layoffs, but an increasingly severe hiring freeze will save the county $3 million, and the work furlough could bring in $9 million, Hickey reported.

Because of existing labor contracts, the county can impose weeklong furloughs without pay on just 1,600 managerial and administrative employees, but administrators are meeting with labor unions for the county’s other 14,000 employees in an effort to spread the program to all employees.

“We would be willing to discuss it,” said Kraig Peck, of the San Diego Service Council, which represents 10,000 county employees.