Board OKs Funds to Fingerprint County Relief Applicants : Government: The nearly $1.3-million system would link Orange and Los Angeles counties to ensure general aid recipients aren’t getting help from both.

In an effort to stop people from registering more than once for general relief, the Orange County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to spend nearly $1.3 million on a program to fingerprint aid applicants.

The county expects to get back its investment and save an estimated $64,000 over 54 months--with possible expansion and greater savings down the road, officials said.

“We have no choice,” said Angelo Doti, director of financial assistance in the county Department of Social Services. “I think this is the forerunner of what will sweep the nation for public assistance.”

Starting in mid-September or October, people applying for general relief in Orange County and those already on the rolls will be fingerprinted. Those prints will be run through a computer system shared with Los Angeles County to make certain they are not already receiving aid in either county.

The fingerprinting would apply only to the 3,600 adults on general relief in Orange County. But the concept is likely to be expanded to other aid recipients, including the nearly 40,000 parents of children on welfare, according to Doti and other social service officials.

Los Angeles County, which has been fingerprinting general aid recipients for three years, in April started including adult recipients in the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program as part of a state demonstration project. If that experiment also reduces abuses, the state Department of Human Services is expected to recommend fingerprinting statewide for AFDC.

Doti said he believes fingerprinting will be the answer to the easy availability of false identifications.

“We understand for $30 you can buy a complete identification, including driver’s license, social security card and a so-called green card,” he said. Moreover, he said, courts have ruled that welfare agencies may not require poor people to have identification in order to receive aid.

On Tuesday, the board’s decision to begin fingerprinting drew mixed reviews from the people most affected by it.

“It’s cool,” said Henry Valejo, 37, an unemployed door maker who said he now receives $280 a month in general relief and $112 in food stamps. He was seated outside the county Social Services office on Walnut Avenue, surrounded by satchels filled with his belongings.

He said he wouldn’t mind being fingerprinted if it would stop fraud.

“I think it should have been done a long time ago,” he said.

Others waiting in the lobby agreed that fingerprinting was a practical solution to a very real problem.

But Robert Hartman, an unemployed psychology instructor from Santa Ana, said he worried about how the move would affect the self-esteem of people who are already feeling down and out.

He said that the prospect of fingerprinting, coupled with the metal detector installed at the door of the welfare office last month, contributed to “the atmosphere of a jail.”

The key to the new program’s success will be its link with the existing fingerprinting program in Los Angeles County, said Arnold Winkle, Orange County’s administrative manager of information systems. He estimated that 60% of the savings will come from catching Los Angeles County residents who illegally apply for general assistance in Orange County using false identification.

The Los Angeles County program, run by Electronic Data Systems Corp., has saved about $2 million since June, 1991, said Lisa Nunez, chief of the computer services division of the Los Angeles County Public Social Services Department.

Doti said it is hoped fingerprint matching also will detect people who have been temporarily suspended from general assistance in either county because they refuse to abide by the rules, such as participating in work programs.

Kathleen Freed, executive assistant to Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who has been the board’s chief advocate for the fingerprinting, said the $64,000 is “just a tip of the iceberg” in potential local savings from the program. She said San Diego County already is considering joining the system, which would broaden the net for catching double dippers.

The purpose of the program, Freed said, “is to have the resources available for the truly needy.”

County officials said they have not received complaints from advocates for the poor about fingerprinting being an invasion of privacy or tool of discrimination. One reason, they said, is that the county has given assurance that the fingerprint information will not be given to law enforcement agencies.

“We aren’t opposed to it,” said John Palacio of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It will not only protect the taxpayer but the recipients. If their ID is misplaced or stolen, it will ensure that their benefits are not being used by someone else.”