Legal Aid Lawyer Argues Suit to Block Cutting Needy Clients Off General Relief : Welfare: Superior Court case could have far-reaching effect on government responsibility for the poor.

Hundreds of needy people, unable to find work in a slumping economy, will be left to the mercy of friends, family or volunteer agencies if San Diego County is allowed to carry out its decision to cut them from a last-resort welfare program.

That was the contention Tuesday of a Legal Aid lawyer as a potentially far-reaching case on government responsibility for the poor opened in Superior Court.

Robert Newman, an attorney with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, told Judge Judith Haller that the county, with a $1.9-billion budget and at least $80 million in discretionary programs, has the money to keep so-called “employable adults” on its General Relief rolls.

“Less than half, a minority of these recipients, are likely to find any employment at all” and only a tiny percentage will find jobs that last as long as a year, Newman said. “Employment remains a theoretical resource for these needy individuals.”

The class-action lawsuit is aimed at blocking a Jan. 14 decision by the Board of Supervisors to cut more than 2,400 able-bodied adults from its welfare rolls by limiting them to three months of payments every year. General Relief provides $291 a month to single adults who qualify for no other public assistance program except Food Stamps.

The county effort to trim more than 2,400 able-bodied people from a program that serves more than 6,000 poor people would save more than $4.7 million annually, according to Legal Aid lawyers. According to the county’s legal papers, 4,496 people received the payments for at least three months in 1991.

The case is being watched by several other California counties, which could enact similar measures and cut welfare costs if San Diego can persuade Haller that it is no longer bound by a 1971 California Supreme Court decision obligating counties to support all indigent residents, according to county attorney Ian Fan.

Haller has ruled in the county’s favor once before, refusing in February to grant a preliminary injunction that would have halted the welfare cuts. A state appeals court subsequently overruled her, ordering a trial on the issue before the time limit could be imposed.

The county argues that times have changed in the 21 years since the Supreme Court ruling in Mooney vs. Pickett, specifically because the enactment of Proposition 13 has left counties without the ability to raise taxes when the costs of mandatory programs such as General Relief rise.

Fan contended that three months of benefits is a reasonable time limit for the supervisors to establish and argued that Legal Aid lawyers have underestimated the number of welfare recipients who would find work.

Fan attempted to discredit the testimony of the Legal Aid attorneys’ first witness, University of Illinois assistant professor Anthony Halter, who has studied the impact of general relief program cuts in other states.

In a study of Philadelphia recipients, Halter testified that 37% initially found jobs, but only 3% to 4% had them a year later.

But Fan forced Halter to admit that his study was plagued by methodological problems and showed that he did not determine whether the welfare recipients found jobs months after they were cut from the rolls.

Halter testified that other studies, including a larger one by the state of Pennsylvania, came to similar conclusions as his.

In an interview after the morning session of the trial, Newman said he was disturbed by the county’s expenditure of more than $100,000 on expert witnesses and a review of its General Relief files. He noted that the county is paying one expert at least $325 an hour, or more than a General Relief recipient is given in a month.

Fan responded that experts “are not cheap, but on the other hand, they are not going to cost as much as the county would save if it won the lawsuit.”