Behind the Budget Numbers There Is a Human Drama

I went to the Hubert H. Humphrey Comprehensive Health Center last week to remind myself that people--real, live men, women and children--are affected by California’s perpetual state budget crisis.

People, especially when they’re hurt, are the last thing the Sacramento crowd wants in the budget story. Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders prefer to use the bloodless language of the bureaucrat.

Thus, Wilson and legislative Democrats want to take money from “local government” to fulfill Sacramento’s obligation to support the public schools. Reading these words, you’d probably figure that the money wouldn’t be missed, that it just goes to pay the salaries of a bunch of bureaucrats sitting around the county building or city hall.

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One of the “local government” institutions threatened by Sacramento’s plans is the Humphrey center, which may be closed.

With the state facing a huge deficit, Wilson has proposed shifting $2.6 billion in property taxes from counties and cities to the schools. Legislative Democrats favor a smaller transfer, $1.3 billion. Even at the lower figure, it would be “necessary to reduce services across a broad spectrum of county services,” Chief Administrative Officer Harry L. Hufford told the Board of Supervisors last week. “Most departments face program reductions in the range of 16%.”

One of the budget-cutting proposals outlined by Hufford would close the Humphrey center, one of five community health centers that provide services ranging from prenatal care to emergency treatment for Los Angeles County’s poor.

The center is in a big fortress of a building at Main Street and Slauson Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles. The neighborhood is marked by many signs of poverty. Across Main Street is a kitchen that provides breakfasts and dinners to the homeless and other poor. Gang graffiti decorates the walls of nearby buildings. Along Slauson are ruins, rubble and vacant lots, souvenirs of the riot.

The center provides out-patient care to 80,000 people, an increase of 25,000 patients in just four years. They are either unemployed or “working poor,” a euphemism for people who work their tails off for less than minimum wages and no benefits, often in underground economy jobs.

Willie T. May, in charge of county health facilities in southern L.A. County, showed me around.

The place was clean and neat. The nurses looked sharp and attentive. It was late afternoon, and the morning rush was over. We stopped by the urgent care section, where people are given emergency treatment for injuries and illnesses. A dozen or so men and women, most of them Latino, sat in plain plastic chairs, patiently enduring the three-hour waits that usually accompany their visits.

We walked through the facilities devoted to preventive medicine, a good portion of the work done at the clinic.

Pregnant women waited for prenatal care. Diabetics and hypertension victims received medication--and counseling on diet and other good health practices. On other days, children are inoculated against measles and other ailments. Physical examinations turn up cases of tuberculosis, a once-conquered disease now returning to L.A.’s slums.

Preventive medicine, May said, is one of the center’s most valuable contributions.

Prenatal care costs $400 to $500, he said, compared to the $15,000 often required to keep a premature baby alive. Regular doses of insulin and proper diet prevents long, expensive treatment of diabetic complications. Treatment of hypertension prevents strokes.

If you look at it this way, the cost of prevention is much lower than treating illnesses caused by neglect. In the long run, it would be more expensive to close the Hubert H. Humphrey Comprehensive Health Center than to keep it open.

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The same point could be made for the other city and county facilities targeted for closure or reduction. The county is contemplating closing 41 fire stations, shutting down eight of the 20 sheriff’s patrol stations and reducing or eliminating misdemeanor prosecutions.

Aware of the potential long-term costs of these moves, city and county officials, who don’t often work together, joined Friday to protest the plans percolating in Sacramento. Republican Mayor-elect Richard Riordan opposed the property tax shift advocated by Wilson. He was joined by two Democrats, Mayor Tom Bradley and Ed Edelman, chairman of the Board of Supervisors.

Being on the ground, they realize that the solution to the budget impasse is infinitely more complicated when you think of it in terms of people.