S.D. Can Cut Welfare for Thousands

In a case that offers budget-cutting hope to California counties, a judge ruled Tuesday that financially strapped San Diego County may cut thousands of able-bodied adults from a last-resort welfare program.

Government, San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith Haller said, does not have an indefinite moral responsibility to support the needy. Though state law requires each of California’s 58 counties to provide welfare, each county must retain the right to balance its budget the way it sees fit in times of “fiscal impossibility,” Haller said.

A trim of the welfare rolls is likely to force people onto the streets, Haller conceded. But, when a “fiscal crisis” looms, the need to keep funding courts, police, hospitals and jails outweighs the “individual deprivation to a small group of people,” Haller said.

The ruling flies directly in the face of legal precedent barring such cuts, and lawyers for the 2,200 poor people in San Diego County affected by the ruling promised an immediate appeal. The county’s plan would limit able-bodied adults to three months of payments each year. Actual cuts are still weeks or months away, pending the appeal.

“This is an example of a Board of Supervisors using poor people as a scapegoat for budgetary problems,” said Robert D. Newman, an attorney with the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles, which brought the class-action lawsuit with the Legal Aid Society of San Diego.

If upheld on appeal, however, the ruling could mean a boon to California counties, especially urban counties seeking innovative ways to cut costs. “All counties are hurting, just like we are,” said Ian Fan, the deputy San Diego County counsel who tried the case.

In May, Alameda County supervisors voted to impose a similar three-month limit on benefits for single adults, effective Jan. 1. Los Angeles and Orange county officials, eager for details about the San Diego plan, have been in “frequent” contact recently with the San Diego Department of Social Services, said Dale Fleming, General Relief program manager.

It’s also possible the ruling will figure significantly in San Diego politics. County Supervisor Susan Golding, a current mayoral candidate, proposed the three-month rule. She called the court ruling a “victory for the citizens of San Diego and a victory for common sense.”

An internal Golding campaign memo that surfaced earlier this year revealed that a pollster had urged her to take a strong stand against continued payments to able-bodied adults--to gain publicity. But Golding said Tuesday, “This issue has to do with managing the county’s budget effectively. It has nothing to do with politics.”

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted Jan. 14 for the three-month limit on General Relief benefits. In San Diego County, those benefits total up to $291 a month, given to single adults who qualify for no other public assistance except food stamps.

On any given day, about 6,000 single adults usually are on the San Diego General Relief rolls. The state requires the county to provide the benefits but does not provide any funds for the monthly checks.

The current solution to the state budget crisis would lift some of the requirements that counties be caretakers of the last resort. But with the outcome of the budget crisis still uncertain, the San Diego lawsuit commanded the attention of welfare administrators around the state.

“As other areas of government walk away, (General Relief programs) have become the deliberate safety net of last resort,” said Angelo Doti, director of financial assistance at the Orange County Social Services Agency.

“Without (legislative) relief,” Doti said, “we are truly going to have severe fiscal crises. And that’s going to force counties to look at policies such as the one in San Diego--and give some serious consideration to limits.”

Months ago, Haller had signaled she was likely to approve limits. In February, she had declined to issue a preliminary injunction that would have halted the welfare cuts.

A state appeals court, the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego, later overruled Haller and blocked the cuts. It also ordered a trial on the issue. The three-week trial wrapped up last week, after presenting a vivid contrast in the practical meaning of budget woes:

Number-crunching experts, economists and bureaucrats sporting suits and ties testified for days about deficits, explaining charts and pointing to graphs. Then General Relief recipient Robert Toothacre, 47, who relies on a cane to walk, hobbled to the witness stand and testified that some weeks he got by on raw hot dogs.

San Diego County’s fiscal 1993 budget totals about $1.9 billion. The county currently faces a deficit of $16 to $21 million, according to trial testimony. That deficit is due to grow much larger by the end of fiscal 1993, as high as $50 to $75 million, according to current projections that figure in the state budget crisis.

Trimming about 2,200 able-bodied people who already have received their three months of General Relief checks would save the county about $3.5 million this fiscal year, or less than one-sixth of 1% of the budget, according to Newman, the Western Center on Law and Poverty lawyer.

Newman claimed at the trial the county is bound by a 1971 California Supreme Court ruling that obligates each of the state’s 58 counties to support all indigents. He said that means anyone needy and all the time.

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

The costs of mandatory programs such as General Relief keep rising, Fan said. But the 1978 enactment of Proposition 13, the landmark tax-cutting initiative, left counties without the ability to keep pace by raising taxes.

Without that ability, Fan said, three months of benefits is a reasonable time limit, even for “all” the needy--since it means no one will go empty-handed.

Traditionally, the courts have turned down claims of “fiscal impossibility,” usually saying they can’t be proven. But Haller said she was moved by San Diego County’s fiscal crisis, adding that the county had taken extraordinary efforts to pare its budget.

During the past 18 months, the county has announced a hiring freeze, asked its employees to take voluntary time off, slashed travel vouchers and frozen one-time expenditures. Investors have been told the county has a higher risk of defaulting on its bonds, Haller said.

So, she said, even a cut of less than 1% of the county budget takes on “added significance” because it amounts to millions of dollars. In such a situation, she said, “fiscal constraints can serve as a defense.”

Haller conceded that the county could opt to cut other programs, and use those funds to pay all the poor people $291 a month all year long while still balancing its budget--though she claimed it would be a “monumental” task.

That promises to be a key issue on appeal, Newman said.

“I don’t think this county made an argument of fiscal impossibility,” he said. “They made an argument of fiscal constraint.” He added that he believed his chances for success on appeal were reasonably good.

It will be up to an appellate court to decide whether the $291 checks keep coming while the appeal is waged.

Toothacre, reached Tuesday at a downtown San Diego community center, said he was not sure what the future holds. He hasn’t been able to find work in three years, he said.

Sometimes, he said, he can scrounge a meal at a shelter. He sleeps at a downtown San Diego hotel, where he pays $57 a week and shares a room with another man. The bathroom is down the hall. Without that $291 check, he said, he surely will find himself on the streets.

“It’s rough,” he said of the ruling. “It’s bad. It’s very scary.”