O.C. Budget Cuts Hit Hardest at Youth, Poor : Government: Final approval given plan that trims work force by 258 positions and cuts spending by 5%.

Without fanfare, the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday gave final approval to a hard times, $3.6-billion budget that cuts deeply into programs for the young and the poor and trims the county’s work force by 258 positions.

The budget represents an actual 5% reduction in county spending. It includes no new taxes.

“The day has finally come,” said Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who was sitting in for the absent board chairman, Supervisor Roger R. Stanton. “We have kind of massaged this budget for months and months, and I can say now we massaged it into good shape.”

County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider said he did not know how many of the county’s 16,000 workers would be laid off because of the reduced spending. Pointing to last year’s tight budget, however, he noted that while county officials eliminated 263 “positions” only seven employees were actually let go.

Wieder, Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez, Thomas F. Riley and Don R. Roth all praised the county’s budget team for getting a quick jump last year on the bleak financial times that lay ahead, eliminating the confusion and “last-minute scurrying around” that is taking place in other California counties and cities.

“We prepared for that other shoe to drop, and we are not in the same scurrying, frantic and frenetic position that many of the cities in Orange County and our neighboring county of Los Angeles are finding themselves in,” Wieder said. “They don’t know who to shoot first, so to speak, or who to shoot at.”

Not only did the county have its own budget problems because of the recession, but its difficulties were compounded by an even more serious financial crisis at the state level. The county lost more than $37.4 million in state money, while the cities in Orange County lost another $20 million.

During June, the supervisors slashed $3.7 million from mental health services and saved another $1.8 million by reducing payments to medical care providers and deleted in-home services to the disabled for another $2.5-million savings. In all, the county trimmed more than $42 million in services.

Douglas Barton, deputy director of Adult Community Mental Health Services, said the cuts dealt a serious blow to the county’s mental health services. The reductions caused a 75% cut in the homeless outreach program and forced the closure of the Garden Grove Adult Mental Health clinic in July to save the county about $336,000 a year.

Barton said the clinic served about 1,500 mentally ill people and was one of nine such treatment centers in the county.

Mental Health Services had to eliminate 58 positions, Barton said.

“The tragedy is this affects people who are in serious need of psychiatric care.”

He also said the cuts will:

* Increase the response time on emergency calls from people in need of psychiatric evaluation.

* Reduce the amount of outpatient services for psychiatric patients, including fewer therapeutic visits.

Although the supervisors called it the “final budget,” Schneider pointed to unresolved budget problems still pending for the courts and special districts that provide fire, flood control, parks, lighting and library services. The districts are short about $20 million, while state funding has left the municipal and superior courts about $6.5 million short.

With one eye already on next year’s financial picture, Schneider said he hoped to have his “final, final budget” dealing with the state shortfall before the supervisors on Nov. 3. Then, he said, his budget team, including budget director Ronald S. Rubino and senior budget manager Steven Franks, will begin working on the 1993-94 budget. Schneider, along with most others, agreed that next year’s budget will be as hard, if not harder, to balance than this year’s.

The recession-year spending plan adopted Tuesday, according to Schneider, represents a 5%, or $184-million, decrease over the county’s 1991-92 budget.

“This is really the first year in the 20 years I have worked at the county that I recall the budget going down or being decreased by that large of a percentage,” he said.

“It has been a long and very agonizing process,” Vasquez said of this year’s budget, adding that in a few weeks the state will be back out with another financial forecast for next year.

“It doesn’t take a financial wizard to figure out that it’s not going to be a good one,” Vasquez said. “The potential for a sequel to this year is possible and highly probable.”

According to Stanton’s office, the supervisor was taking care of personal matters Tuesday and was unable to be present at the meeting.

Herbert Rosenzweig, director of the county’s medical services, said the new budget’s 5% cut in medical care for indigents means that hospitals, doctors and clinics are doing the same amount of work, but for less money.

Russell Inglish, Orange County’s representative for the Hospital Council of Southern California, explained that the hospitals and doctors are reimbursed by the county for their services.

“This budget means they will be reimbursed a little less,” he said. “There might be one or two doctors who decide not to provide care, but I think most will continue.”

Tom Uram, director of the county’s Health Care Agency, said the supervisors’ vote was “only a formality, we have already taken all our cuts.” But, he added, there is a possibility that some additional cutbacks will be necessary in children’s mental health programs if Sacramento cuts more money from the county’s portion of funds from Proposition 99, the state initiative that raised the cigarette tax for health care.

The county already has eliminated a contract it had with a Los Angeles hospital for 15 beds for mentally disturbed children, one official said.

Much of the bitterness and animosity that usually accompanies budget cutting was eliminated this year because of the early start by administrators. They began freezing positions last year and by the beginning of this year had eliminated 1,400 unfilled positions.

The county and representatives from the municipal and superior courts are negotiating exactly how $6.5 million in state cuts are going to be handled.

“It’s like a tube of toothpaste: If you squeeze in one area it bulges in another,” said Alan Slater, Superior Court executive officer.

“With all the cutbacks, there is no fat; we are already to the bone, and it will be up to judges to decide what can be cut without affecting constitutional mandates,” Slater said.

Times correspondent Maresa Archer and staff writer Mark I. Pinsky contributed to this story.

Budget Division

The 1992-93 budget adopted by the Orange County Board of Supervisors cuts funds for three of eight programs, with the largest bites occurring in capital improvements and environmental management. Here is how the budget is divided: Public protection: 14% Health services: 6% Community and social services: 16% Environmental management: 23% General government and services: 7% Capital improvements: 8% Debt service: 14% Insurance/reserves/misc.: 12%