Faces Behind Cuts Confront Supervisors : Budget: Board members listen for nearly seven hours to pleas to restore cuts proposed in health care, mental health services and other programs. Drastic rollbacks get preliminary approval, however.

A blind woman led by her guide dog, relatives of the mentally ill and schoolchildren were among more than 300 people who jammed the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday to lobby for continued funding of community programs in the face of a proposal to chop about $82.5 million from next year’s budget.

But despite their impassioned eleventh-hour pleas, the Board of Supervisors gave preliminary approval to a plan that would slash the monies from the general fund--a move that will mean deep cuts for health care, mental health services and numerous other county programs. Supervisors will put their final stamp on the nearly half-billion budget June 30. The new fiscal year begins July 1.

For nearly seven hours, the five supervisors listened without a lunch break to wrenching testimony from those who will be most deeply affected by the cuts.

The crowd filled the meeting room and an annex, overflowing into the aisles. Green caps worn by members of several 4-H youth groups--one of the programs threatened by funding cuts--dotted the crowd.

Children who train guide dogs for the blind--under another Cooperative Extension program partially funded by the county--sternly ordered their pupils to lie down at their feet during the lengthy testimony. They, too, had come to ask that their program be spared.

While the actual cuts--the worst in recent memory--will be felt throughout the county, mental health services and other health programs will be hit the hardest, officials said.

These programs will lose about $5.9 million--or 11.6% of their total budgets.

During tense testimony, doctors, health care workers, patients and relatives of the mentally ill delivered impassioned appeals to the board to reconsider its spending priorities and restore funding to help thousands of generally poor people in the county who do not have private insurance and who depend on county assistance to get treatment for mental and physical disabilities.

Many of the speakers used stories from their own lives to illustrate the need for maintaining county services.

Bill Helf of Yorba Linda told of his family’s discovery that his son, now 22, is a paranoid schizophrenic and of the treatment he receives. He urged the supervisors to forgo more “brick and mortar” and other construction projects if it would allow the county to spend more on mental health services.

“Up until a couple of years ago, I thought mentally ill people were just lazy,” Helf said. “But these are sick people.”

Nancy Rimsha, a lawyer for Legal Aid of Orange County, put it more bluntly.

“To make these kind of people go without treatment,” she said, “is absolutely barbaric.”

Nearly a dozen health programs are slated for closure or drastic staff reductions under the budget reductions, which one resident likened to “cutting into the loin” of a piece of meat when the fat is already gone.

Richard F. Kammerman, a doctor who is president of the Orange County Medical Assn., told the supervisors that “these cuts further dissolve an already tenuous health care delivery system.”

However, Supervisor Roger R. Stanton told the audience that the county is reaching a “breaking point” in its fiscal predicament, battling a recession and declining state funds. He compared the situation to a plane that has one blown engine with a second that is sputtering and running low on fuel. The county, like the plane, has to get rid of its excess cargo, he said.

In ridding that excess cargo during the months-long budget deliberations, county officials said they gave priority to public safety over health and social issues because that seemed to be the public’s main concern.

But the testimony and numbers at Tuesday’s hearing told a different story.

Only five members of the audience addressed the budget proposals for public safety programs, which face lesser cuts--1.8% trimmed from $233 million--than most other programs. In comparison, more than three dozen people appealed to the board to reverse the cuts proposed for health and mental services. No one spoke out in favor of the proposals in this area.

Howard Waitzkin, chairman of the Orange County Task Force on Indigent Health Care, said that Orange County already ranks below all four of its neighboring counties in the money it spends on health care on both a per capita basis and as a portion of total allocations.

“When you say you can’t spend more on health and mental health, we say, ‘baloney,’ ” Waitzkin asserted.

But the supervisors were quick to challenge assertions from Waitzkin and other speakers who suggested that the county is not doing all it can to fully fund health care programs.

“This is not an area that we take lightly,” Stanton told one speaker who objected to the health cuts. “This is a very painful area for us.”

As the hearings wore on, the tempers of the supervisors began to flare.

During afternoon testimony over the fate of the Cooperative Extension program--a program sponsored by the county in conjunction with the University of California--Stanton and Gaddi H. Vasquez roundly criticized program administrators for mismanagement.

The Cooperative Extension program, which runs the 4-H club program among others, was seeking to avert some $55,000 in proposed cuts. The 4-H club provides a variety of activities for those ages 9 to 19.

Stanton told the audience that the children in the program had been “betrayed” by its administrators.

Facing more than a dozen teary-eyed children who turned out in support of the program, the supervisors were clearly frustrated.

At one point during the testimony, Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder asked one 16-year-old girl pointedly, “If we had the money, would you want us to give it to you or give it to mental health?”

“I don’t think it’s fair for you to ask us for this when you’ve been here all day and know what our choices are,” Wieder said to supporters of the program. “Look at the big picture. What would you do in our place? Turn all the mentally ill people out on the street?”

Supervisor Don R. Roth also criticized Cooperative Extension program organizers for “using these young people to come up to the microphone.”

“We don’t seem to be getting our message across,” he said. “We don’t have the money. You can’t just keep writing checks on a checkbook when there is no money in the bank.”