San Diego County Plan for Welfare Limits Upheld : Benefits: Judge’s ruling allows government to drop able-bodied adults from general relief. The action is being watched by other fiscally pressed governments. Lawyers representing the needy plan an appeal.

In a case that may have implications statewide, a judge ruled Tuesday that financially strapped San Diego County may cut thousands of able-bodied adults from a last-resort welfare program.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith Haller said government does not have a moral responsibility to support the needy indefinitely. 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.

Although trimming welfare rolls may force people onto the streets, the need to continue funding courts, police, hospitals and jails outweighs the “individual deprivation to a small group of people,” Haller said.

The ruling contradicts legal precedent barring such reductions, 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 per year. But 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.

The Western Center on Law and Poverty and the Legal Aid Society of San Diego filed the suit against the county board, seeking to block the cuts from taking effect and claiming that the plan violated a landmark 1971 court case that obligated the county to support all indigent residents.

If upheld on appeal, the ruling could encourage other California counties to follow suit. “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 recently been in frequent contact with the San Diego Department of Social Services, said Dale Fleming, manager of the general relief program.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted Jan. 14 for the three-month limit on general relief benefits. In San Diego County, the benefits are $291 a month for single adults who qualify for no other public assistance except food stamps.

About 6,000 single adults 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 program. 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 for 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.”

San Diego County’s fiscal 1993 budget totals $1.9 billion. The county faces a deficit of $16 million to $21 million, according to trial testimony. The deficit is likely to grow much larger--to as much as $75 million--by the end of fiscal 1993, according to projections that factor in shortfalls in state funding.

Denying aid to about 2,200 able-bodied people who already have received three months of general relief checks would save the county about $3.5 million this fiscal year, less than 0.16% of the budget, according to Newman of the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

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

During the last 18 months, the county has announced a hiring freeze, asked its employees to take voluntary time off, slashed travel vouchers and frozen some expenditures.