Lawyers Stress County’s Right to Cut Welfare Roll

Closing a test case with profound statewide implications, lawyers for San Diego County told a judge Wednesday that it is “reasonable and legal” to cut thousands of needy people from a last-resort welfare program.

Rejecting claims that legal precedent bars such cuts and that government bears an ultimate moral responsibility for the poor, the county’s lawyers told San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith Haller that the Board of Supervisors must retain the right to balance its budget the way it sees fit--especially when money is tight.

“In the 1984 presidential campaign, (Democratic nominee) Walter Mondale asked, ‘Where’s the beef?’ ” Ian Fan, a deputy San Diego county counsel, said in closing arguments Wednesday. “There is no beef in this county. This county is out of money.”

Haller has said she is likely to rule in the next two weeks on the case. She listened quietly to nearly two hours of mostly technical legal arguments, taking extensive notes but giving no indication which way she might be leaning.

The class-action lawsuit centers on a Jan. 14 decision by the Board of Supervisors to cut some 2,200 able-bodied adults from the welfare rolls by limiting recipients to three months of payments each year.

The cuts were due to take effect Feb. 1 but were blocked by the class-action suit, filed by the Legal Aid Society of San Diego and the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles.

Haller had declined in February to issue a preliminary injunction that would have halted the welfare cuts. But a state appeals court subsequently overruled her and ordered a trial on the issue before the three-month rule could be put into practice.

The board action, the first of its kind in California, is aimed at the General Relief program, which provides $291 a month to single adults who qualify for no other public assistance programs except food stamps. Typically, about 6,000 single adults are on the rolls at any time.

The state requires the county to provide the benefits but does not provide any funds for the $291 monthly checks. The case is being watched closely by other California counties eager to cut welfare costs.

San Diego County’s fiscal 1993 budget totals about $1.9 billion. The county currently faces a deficit of $16 million to $21 million that is due to grow larger by the end of fiscal 1993, perhaps to $50 to $75 million, Fan said.

But trimming about 2,200 able-bodied people from the program would save the county only about $3.5 million this fiscal year, said Western Center attorney Robert D. Newman.

That’s less than one-sixth of 1% of the fiscal 1993 budget, Newman said, suggesting that it may be politically tenable for the county board to cut the welfare rolls but stressing that the board lacks legal authority for such trims.

San Diego County is bound by a 1971 California Supreme Court ruling that obligates each of California’s 58 counties to support all indigents, Newman said.

If San Diego County wants to get around that ruling, the proper way to do it is to plead with state legislators, not with a trial-court judge, Newman said. Since there has been no legislative action, the ruling remains the law, he said.

“For many of our clients,” he said, that $291 check “is the only thing that keeps them from the streets.”

“I recognize San Diego County is having hard times. But the county is still strong enough, still robust enough and, I believe, still decent enough to not consign these people to the streets.”

Fan, the deputy county counsel, said times have changed since 1971, leaving the state Supreme Court ruling “obsolete.”

The 1978 enactment of Proposition 13, the landmark property tax-cutting initiative, left counties without the ability to raise taxes when the costs of mandatory programs such as General Relief rise, Fan said.

Without that ability, Fan said, three months of benefits is a reasonable time limit for the supervisors to establish, especially with looming million-dollar deficits.

“We are supporting all recipients,” Fan said. “We just don’t want to support them forever.”