County Health Agency Might Trim 23 Jobs : Budget: Most would be management positions. The plan is praised as a model for other departments.

In an indication of cuts to come in Ventura County government, the Health Care Agency has proposed elimination of 23 jobs and the firing of at least 14 workers this summer.

The layoffs--which would hit managers and supervisors the hardest--would represent only the second large-scale dismissal of county workers since 1980, Budget Manager Bert Bigler said.

And dozens more layoffs are possible by late August as the Board of Supervisors slashes the spending of all county departments to eliminate a deficit that could reach $12 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1, Bigler said.

All county departments have been required to submit plans to reduce budgets either 2.5% or 5%, so the supervisors can quickly approve a 1992-93 budget once Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature agree on a state spending plan.

Ventura County gets about 40% of its $436-million general fund budget from the state. The county stands to lose between $6 million and $12 million, depending on how much money the state shifts from counties to school districts--a key point of dispute in Sacramento.

In a letter to the supervisors, Health Care Director Phillipp K. Wessels asks that the board approve on Tuesday a reorganization of his agency’s 95-person building maintenance and housekeeping staff that would eliminate 18 supervisor and management jobs and five maintenance positions. No housekeepers would be fired.

Because of vacancies and early retirements, only 14 to 16 people would actually lose their jobs, Wessels said.

“Our focus has been to get by with fewer management positions,” Wessels said. “We can make some reductions, save some money . . . and not interfere with actual service to our patients.”

Wessels said the reorganization, which will save about $900,000 a year, is a good idea even if it were not necessary because of budget shortages.

The move gives more responsibility to remaining managers and to the workers who clean and maintain the county hospital and public health and mental health buildings.

“We needed to cut the overhead,” said Wessels, whose 1,500-employee agency accounts for nearly one-fourth of all county workers.

Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, a member of the board’s budget committee, praised Wessels’ proposal as a model for other county agencies.

“Although you have to put it into the human terms of people losing their jobs, I don’t look at it as layoffs,” VanderKolk said. “I look at it as a reorganization that makes fiscal sense. It’s the kind of thing that private industry has been doing for several years now.”

A special committee is working with industry to figure out how management can be cut at the county without services being undermined, she said. “As the county grows, perhaps we’ll be able to stay the size we are,” VanderKolk said.

The county work force has already contracted.

Since the budget crisis began nearly two years ago, the supervisors have cut most department budgets about 11%, and another 5% is possible for the new fiscal year.

County employment had dropped from a peak of about 6,700 to 6,300 by the time the board formally imposed a hiring freeze in January. About 120 of those positions have been permanently eliminated, and the county work force now includes about 6,200 full-time employees.

Despite the reductions, nearly all of the cuts have been accomplished by not filling jobs left vacant by resignations and retirements, Bigler said.

Wessels’ proposed layoffs in the Health Care Agency may be the largest group firing in more than a decade, Bigler said. Only layoffs at the county hospital in 1987 might be comparable, he said.