Judge Will Be Asked to Stop Welfare Cuts : Courts: Legal action seeks to prohibit supervisors from slashing general relief payment from $341 to $299 a month while giving $265 million in pension benefits to top officials.

Advocates for the poor are scheduled to ask a Superior Court judge today to enjoin the county Board of Supervisors from slashing general relief payments to the homeless while showering $265 million in increased pension benefits on county officials.

In legal papers, attorneys for legal aid groups are trying to stop the county from reducing the monthly general relief payment to 95,000 single adults from $341 to $299.

“Only last year, the county approved a change in county employee pension rights that costs taxpayers $265 million, considerably more than the amount of (general relief) at stake here,” legal aid attorneys say in papers filed in Superior Court. County Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon has proposed the cuts in general relief to save the county $23 million.

But legal aid attorneys say the county must honor a year-old court settlement under which it agreed to increase general relief payments to $341 a month from $312.

The settlement, one of the first actions taken by a new liberal majority on the board after the election of Supervisor Gloria Molina, ended a court fight that had cost taxpayers $5 million.

County lawyers say the county was relieved of its obligation to adhere to the 1991 court settlement by last summer’s state budget legislation.

But legal aid attorneys say it is disingenuous of the county to claim it cannot undo costly pension increases because of legal constraints while seeking to break a court settlement.

“On the pension situation, the county threw up its hands and said we have a contract, the Constitution prevents us from tearing up that contract. End of discussion,” said Richard A. Rothschild of the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

“When it came to a contract which benefited the county’s poorest citizens, the county decided that while there may be a contract, the best solution would be to go to the Legislature to break that contract.”

County bureaucrats last year--without any study of the financial effect--quietly adopted changes in pension rules that would increase retirement pay of some officials by 19%, to more than $125,000 a year.

The pension changes provide that certain fringe benefits, such as medical insurance and car allowances, be counted with salaries when retirement pay is calculated. County attorneys say the pension changes are irreversible because it is illegal to take away pension benefits already granted.

In the filing, the legal aid attorneys contend that any reduction in general relief payments will create “a whole new class of homeless, hungry and desperate people.”

The filing also includes an affidavit from Mayor Tom Bradley, who says that if assistance is reduced, “it is not a real savings to the taxpayer. It is merely a shifting of the costs of serving the poor to the city who can afford it no better than the county and does not have the legal obligation to provide those services in the first place.”

Dixon could not be reached for comment.