S.D. Supervisors Take Able-Bodied Off Welfare : Budget: Critics say the cost-cutting move will only mean increased crime, homelessness and misery.

Able-bodied adults will be dropped from a last-resort welfare program as part of a package of budget cuts approved Tuesday by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors that could save the beleaguered government as much as $22.7 million.

The controversial decision to cut about 2,700 “employables” from the $291-a-month general relief program--a move that Legal Aid of San Diego lawyers claim will not stand up in court--will save the county $3.4 million during the rest of this fiscal year and more than $8 million in 1992-93.

But advocates for the poor testified Tuesday that San Diego will reap a dividend of increased homelessness, crime, panhandling and misery when the welfare program is reduced by 44%, possibly as early as February.

“Cutting general assistance is an idle dream for which the county will pay much more than it saves,” said Middy Mincer, operations manager of the Western Service Workers Assn. “The jobs are not there for the so-called able-bodied general relief recipient.”

But the supervisors, who approved the plan unanimously, said the savings will allow them to preserve physical and mental health programs for the poor, child protection programs and other more greatly needed social services.

“Are we going to subsidize able-bodied males who could work?” Supervisor Brian Bilbray asked. “And are we going to do that at the demise of needed health services to the poor?”

With the vote, the supervisors also made good on their often-repeated threat to rebel against unfunded mandates from the Legislature, which requires the county to operate the $28.5-million welfare program but does not pay for it.

“We have come to the point in our budget crisis where we cannot any longer allow the state to dictate what the people of San Diego County are going to do with their budget,” Supervisor Susan Golding said.

Indigent adults without children who qualify for no other welfare program are entitled to receive the monthly general relief payments, along with as much as $111 more in food stamp payments.

More than half the recipients are classified “unemployable” because of physical or mental disabilities, but Supervisors Golding, Bilbray and Leon Williams contend that a significant number who could find work are abusing the system. About 20% of all recipients are homeless.

Under a plan advanced by the county staff and adopted by the board Tuesday, employables will receive three months of payments before being cut from the welfare rolls. They can reapply nine months later and qualify for three more months of payments.

A similar proposal by Golding and Williams, which county staff members were directed to consider in implementing the program, would have forced employables off the program after just one or two months. In addition, the pair proposed a requirement that recipients live in the county for a year before applying for the benefits.

State court decisions have specifically prohibited such residence requirements or removal of recipients from welfare rolls simply because the recipients fall into a specific category such as “employable,” according to Anson Levitan, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society of San Diego County.

Joan Zinser, deputy director of income maintenance for the county Department of Social Services, said her agency will probably implement the new rules in February. Officials have not decided whether they will drop all employables who have received three months of payments before that date, or whether the clock will start ticking then.

In other budget action, the supervisors ratified a plan, announced Monday, to ask all 15,300 county employees to voluntarily take a week off without pay. County officials said Monday that they hoped to save $5.8 million through the program, but Tuesday they estimated that the savings could be as much as $9 million if every county staff member complied.

The work furlough proposal allowed the supervisors to postpone, for now, cuts in a wide variety of other programs, including mental health, physical health, parks and the Sheriff’s Department SWAT team.

In all, the reductions will save the county $18.75 million to $22.75 million, depending on the popularity of the work furlough program, which was endorsed Monday by most of the county’s labor unions.