It’s So Bad, L.A. County Might Have to Shape Up

About the only worthwhile feature of Gov. Pete Wilson’s stripped-down budget is that it may reform the loose fiscal practices of Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon and most members of the Board of Supervisors.

That’s because Wilson’s proposed cuts in social services and health care will hand over enormous new responsibilities to county government.

California’s 58 counties are already in charge of running hospitals and health clinics for the poor, welfare offices, mental health treatment centers, AIDs care and many other health and welfare programs.

But the programs are largely financed by state and federal government. The counties are merely the front-line administrators, giving out the benefits in accordance with strict regulations handed down by Sacramento and Washington.

Wilson’s budget would reduce state health and welfare aid by $2.2 billion. This reduction is part of a plan to make up a budget deficit of $10-billion-plus caused by the recession.

While cutting aid to the counties, Wilson also wants to lift many of the rules. What it means is this: Los Angeles County will be poorer but it will also have more freedom to pick and choose the services it will provide. It will also have a freer hand in the cuts it will make.

In past budget deliberations, Dixon and the majority of the five-member board have used the restrictive regulations as an excuse for inaction. Complaining that “our hands are tied,” the supervisors have appeared to give the budget Dixon prepares no more than perfunctory examination before they pass it.

In the past year, however, we’ve had tantalizing hints that this neglectful budget examination hides some very spendthrift activities.

These include a $265-million pension increase for county employees and the supes themselves, Dixon’s infamous office remodeling, bulletproof limos for the supes, catered supervisorial lunches at the Hall of Administration, and big-ticket expense account items.

State officials, regardless of political party, have long suspected Los Angeles County officials of wasting a lot of money while whining about being broke. As the state officials see it, Los Angeles County now will have to begin intense, public examination of the budget and start setting priorities.

That isn’t happening now. After allocating the state and federal funds for health and welfare, Dixon takes the remaining money and divides most of it up by five, so each supervisor gets a roughly equal share. Dixon and the supes don’t work up a countywide list of priorities. Rather, they use the old-fashioned pork barrel method of trading votes for each supe’s favorite project: You support my new courthouse, I’ll vote for your new park.

In addition, an unknown amount of money--possibly many millions--is squirreled away in each department, and no one can figure out how it’s spent. Salaries, fringe benefits and expenses are all kept secret.

The county government Establishment or “family” protects this loose system because it benefits family members.

The pension deal illustrates that point. Dixon proposed that fringe benefits for county officials be counted along with salaries in computing pension benefits. This plan, put into effect without a public vote, will increase pension costs by as much as $265 million.

When the pension deal was disclosed, the county grand jury investigated. But county attorneys and Superior Court Judge Cecil Mills censored and watered down the jurors’ report. Afterward, juror Nancy Ellis Schoettler, talking to a reporter, said of the censors: “Everyone had a conflict of interest.”

When the new budget becomes law, the county supervisors will start taking the heat, rather than shifting blame to Sacramento, as they do now.

“This puts the county budget under county control,” one state official told me. “It also means that the constituent groups (receiving aid) will all be at the Board of Supervisors’ meetings.”

Wilson, supported by legislative Democrats, also proposes giving county supervisors authority to raise taxes--probably the sales tax--to make up for the loss of state aid.

I can just visualize supervisors’ meetings next year. The board room will be packed with protesters against tax increases and welfare and health cutbacks. The supervisors will be the main players in a long and intense fight over health and welfare benefits.

Don’t expect any winners. The streets will be crowded with more homeless, the county hospitals more miserable than ever. Promising programs for AIDS, drug rehabilitation and the developmentally disabled will be dropped.

To survive the political heat from all this, the supervisors will have to abandon their sloppy ways of the past. As one state official told me: “Things are so bad there really is an opportunity to make some changes.”