Supervisors’ Priorities Out to Lunch

The Long Beach Human Services Building offers a depressing view of how Los Angeles County cares for the mentally disturbed poor.

Seismic cracks decorate the walls of the old building, rebuilt after its destruction in the 1933 earthquake. Paint is peeling. Employees tell of rats creeping about the place during the day and burglars breaking in at night. Crack is sold in an adjacent apartment house, an enterprise that may be connected to the occasional drive-by shooting. In this dismal setting, the violent mentally ill are dangerously close to the nonviolent, and to a county facility for abused children in the same complex.

I was going to write about the place, but Harold Johnson, a top Mental Health Department official, told me the county knew of the problems, and the department and the local county supervisor, Deane Dana, were working hard to improve conditions. New quarters will be available by summer.

Going along with the old journalistic cliche of “no conflict, no story,” I dropped the idea. Then I read the story about the county supervisors having an expensive caterer, Jean Marie, come in from Pasadena to grill them fresh fish or chicken when they worked through lunch. The cost: $40 a person in tax dollars.

Imagine us buying them catered grilled fish and chicken while the Long Beach Human Services Building staff runs over to Anaheim Street for a quick and greasy taco.

The supervisors seem to be living in a different world than the rest of us.

State law makes them responsible for the county’s poorest residents, among them the mentally and physically ill. Years of diminished appropriations from the federal and state governments have turned this responsibility into a war--a daily battle for survival by the county workers in the trenches and the sick people they’re trying to serve.

And here are the generals, safely behind the lines, eating nouvelle cuisine on a table covered with white linen.

I can just see the supervisors. Another night of roughing it at fund-raising banquets. Then a long morning session filled with rude questions from the public. Stressful situations like that can sharpen the appetite. Bowls of vegetables and rice with plate of chocolate mousse. Jean Marie leans over the grill, making sure the fish and chicken is cooked to order.

In such a pleasant atmosphere, it’s easy to understand why the supes would rather interrogate the chef than ask tough questions about places like the Long Beach Human Services Center: “How’s the ahi tuna today, Jean Marie? Are you sure it’s fresh?”

All this was uncovered by Times reporters Rich Simon and Fred Muir, who discovered how a special checking account, controlled by Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon, was tapped for $117,000 last year to buy elegant meals, fresh fruit and flowers.

“A great attempt to twist the facts in order to promote a liberal agenda,” said Supervisor Mike Antonovich, attacking the story at Tuesday’s supervisorial meeting. Such animosity is not new to Simon. A little more than a year ago, he was handcuffed briefly by a sheriff’s sergeant when he tried to question supervisors, who’d locked the doors for one of their super-secret executive sessions.

Now that I know about the lunches, I can guess why Simon was arrested. The supervisors didn’t want him around. Who knows what they were having for lunch that day?

Health apparently was a major reason for the grilled fish and chicken. This is L.A., the land of lean, and the supes certainly don’t want to miss this trend.

Personal health has always occupied an inordinate amount of supervisorial attention and county money. The most famous instance of this was in 1953, when Supervisor Raymond Darby died after an irate citizen jumped the railing in the board’s old meeting room and punched him in the nose. Oldtimers say that’s why the supervisors built a separate hallway to their present hearing room, far from the public. They also had their dais elevated out of arm’s reach.

Their preoccupation with their health manifests itself in other ways. The supervisors have a bulletproof shield between the dais and the audience and four of them ride in bulletproof cars.

Monday, the embarrassed supervisors began to retrench. Supervisor Dana, the board chairman, canceled lunches by Jean Marie. At Tuesday’s board meeting, he said, “No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. . . . It’s a big county, lots of things are going on, we just have to be watchful. That’s our job.”

Such a radical change of attitude could prove to be a tremendous mental strain on the supes.

If they can’t handle it, I suggest they get help from the Long Beach Human Services Center, 1401 Chestnut Ave. Parking available on the street, in front of the crack house.