O.C. Cutbacks Threaten Poor : Crisis: Critics say aid for homeless and drug-addicted babies is to be slashed to avoid tax increase. Bergeson says needy not singled out.

They are not the first who come to mind as victims in Orange County’s financial crisis. They aren’t the vocal investors, laid-off county workers or schoolchildren robbed of much-anticipated field trips.

They are homeless men and women without families, rootless teen-agers and underweight, drug-addicted babies--the poor and the powerless. And advocates for the needy say they could take the worst bludgeoning of all before the crisis has passed.

For these groups, the budget-cutting frenzy brought on by the county’s bankruptcy could threaten more than the quality of life. It could threaten their very survival.

“I don’t have enough to live off as it is,” said Costa Mesa native Howard Tingler, a middle-aged, homeless man whose monthly general relief check of $169--not including his food stamp allocation--may be slashed in the county’s fiscal triage. “I’m already on a $5-a-day budget. I don’t know how I can live off of less than that.

“Now I’m thin,” he said, “and it looks like I might get thinner.”

In the first round of budget cuts, county health and welfare officials hastened to assure everyone that direct services would remain intact, despite trimming around the edges.

No longer.

In the wake of $9 million in cuts this fiscal year to the social services and health care agencies, officials are projecting $34 million more for 1995-96. The Social Services Agency could lose nearly half its county funding, and the Health Care Agency more than a quarter.

And, in a move that has advocates for the poor fuming, the county will ask the Legislature this week to relieve it of the responsibility to contribute to certain state-funded programs for the needy--an effort to slash millions of dollars more from the county budget. Officials hope, however, that the state and federal governments will continue to pay their own shares.

On the table in Sacramento are general assistance welfare grants; medical services to the indigent; outreach programs for drug-addicted, expectant mothers; and home visits for babies at risk of serious disability or even death. The proposals are set to be considered in a special session of the Legislature on Friday.

“The social cost of all the (budget) cuts is going to be dramatic,” said Larry Leaman, the county’s social services director. “We’ll see more hungry people, more abuse victims, more tragedies in the communities and more deaths.”

Neglect and foster-care cases will stack up, Leaman said, and child-abuse screenings most likely will be limited strictly to emergency situations. “If there’s only smoke, don’t call us,” Leaman said. “If there’s a fire, well, tell us: How bad is it?”

That, critics say, is unacceptable.

“I do appreciate the fact that everyone has to suffer, but these people are already on the margin,” said Nancy Rimsha, a staff attorney at the Santa Ana-based Legal Aid Society of Orange County. “They don’t have a lot of political clout, and the attitude (among political leaders) has been they’ll do anything but raise taxes.”

It’s another case of striking those least able to strike back, advocates for the needy charge.

“I think there are other points in the budget that can be targeted and are not,” said Barbara Talento, chairwoman of United Way’s Health Care Council. But the poor, she said, “are not the kind of people that can get together in a group like bondholders and see they get their share of the money. . . . Most of them feel they are a sinking boat by themselves.”

Others accuse the county of exploiting the bankruptcy by slipping in government-slashing measures that it couldn’t push through otherwise.

“They’re using this as an excuse,” said Jean Forbath, who sits on the board of Share Our Selves, a nonprofit community service organization and clinic in Costa Mesa.

But county officials say the poor are not being singled out for harsh treatment; their pain reflects their reliance on the county for a wide range of services.

“One of the major functions of the county government is to provide human services,” said Supervisor Marian Bergeson. “The clients are poor, so any county cuts are obviously going to affect them. . . . But it isn’t as though there hasn’t been across-the-board pain.”

Bergeson said the county is asking the state for a suspension of matching fund requirements in order to preserve programs that otherwise would be lost entirely if the county couldn’t pay its share.

Meanwhile, she and other county officials said, the county would be wise to seize on any opportunity for cost efficiencies and partnerships with nonprofit agencies or private organizations that might keep its essential programs afloat.

Even while lamenting budget cuts that he says will sting everyone in the county, social services chief Leaman, for example, said he relishes the chance presented in the legislative package to cast off certain state mandates that result in an expensive “paperwork blizzard.” He proposes, for example, to have welfare recipients fill out certain forms as needed, rather than monthly.

Some of these anti-bureaucratic measures, Leaman said, are ideas the county has advocated for years, but they have always been rejected at the state level. “Now that the county is struggling to provide even the most basic elementary services . . . it’s a good time to try again,” he said.

Many critics do not see any silver lining in the fiscal cloud looming over health and social service programs.

Under the 1995-96 budget proposal issued by acting Chief Administrative Officer Tom Uram last week, community and social services programs together would lose more than a third of their county funding. The Health Care Agency would take a softer hit, shedding 27%--but advocates say it is an amount that cannot be spared without axing important patient services.

Though these agencies do not serve the poor exclusively, many of their programs are geared to the needy. And some critics are rankled that law enforcement seems to have been spared such pain. The Sheriff-Coroner’s Department would lose 13% next fiscal year under Uram’s proposal.

The long-term picture, critics say, looks even bleaker.

More than a third of the 21 emergency proposals the Legislature will consider relate directly to reductions in programs relied upon by poor and disadvantaged residents. Several of the measures could release the county in part or entirely from fiscal obligations to these programs.

One bill would make the general relief welfare program optional, allowing the county to reduce or eliminate its support of the childless poor. The maximum general relief grant in the county now is $249, recently reduced from $299.

The county is seeking to suspend the program entirely, for a savings of about $8 million a year, but may accept a “fallback position” of reducing its payments, said Bergeson aide Dave Kiff. The proposal already has encountered some strong opposition from Democrats in the Legislature.

Another emergency measure could save as much as $4.3 million by waiving county matching funds for 15 programs serving the needy. Among these are literacy and drug programs, and public health services for infants and teen-agers.

Although the changes spelled out in the cost-saving measures would be temporary, lasting two to five years, some fear the effects would last much longer.

“My worry is that we are going to lose that amount of money (permanently),” health care council chairwoman Talento said. “As a citizen I have never seen the city, county or state ever restore anything they have rescinded. I’m certainly not very hopeful about that.”

Talento said the county cannot expect nonprofit agencies and charities to pick up the slack.

This is particularly true in the health care sector, she said. With no public hospital, Orange County already relies heavily on community clinics and private hospitals to provide for its indigent residents.

“There really is no more slack to pick up,” she said. The “funds (of nonprofit agencies) are stretched to the snapping point. . . . They just can’t absorb any more.”

Already, word is out in the clinics, homeless shelters and the streets that cuts are coming. No one knows exactly what part of the county’s safety net will be breached, but there is a sense of foreboding and sadness among county employees and clients.

“I’ve had a couple of clients just go into tears,” said Ricardo Valverde, a senior social worker in a program for pregnant--and often troubled--adolescents and their partners. The program would lose county funding under one legislative proposal.

“There are some clients who are very dependent on us for every move that they make. They do not have a high level of education. The completion of forms just scares them to death. We help them with everything they do.”

A 23-year-old former addict, who credits another county program with helping her to give birth to a drug-free baby, says she would be devastated if the program were scrapped. The outreach program, which supports recovering addicts during and after pregnancy, is scheduled to lose its state funding next year. It is unclear whether the county will keep it afloat.

“It makes me very, very sad,” said the Newport Beach woman, who abused heroin and cocaine. “My God, I would do anything to keep this program. If it wasn’t for this program, I’d probably be back where I was before . . . in a downward spiral.”

Public health nurses say they are troubled in particular by the possibility of quick-fix cuts to prevention programs serving mothers and infants. The costs, they said, will come in emergency room visits and long-term care for disabled or dysfunctional youngsters.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to these people” said Charron Plumer, a public health nurse whose job includes making home visits to medically fragile infants. “I don’t know where they’ll go or what they’ll do.” On a recent visit to Irvine, Plumer looked in on a 13-month-old girl who had spent her first three months in the hospital. She was born addicted to heroin and cocaine, and is now living with her aunt, Shirley Lewis-Holmon.

Lewis-Holmon, a student at UC Irvine, greeted Plumer with a variety of questions, asking her about everything from the girl’s recent ear examination to her nightmares. And as Plumer weighed the little girl and assessed her development, Lewis-Holmon lamented the possible loss of the program for high-risk infants.

“I understand that Orange County is having financial difficulties right now,” she said. “I just wish they would find another way to get their money. It seems like every time something goes wrong, they want to penalize the children.”

Some county workers are going on the offensive on behalf of their jobs and their clients. Social workers recently circulated a petition to save a program designed to heal troubled families and keep children out of the court system.

“No one is speaking on behalf of these children, and I think it’s a crime,” said senior social worker Christine Kostrikin.

It is not only mothers and children, however, who can expect a blow from the county’s budget ax.

For Tingler, the homeless Costa Mesa native, the $169-a-month general relief check he has been receiving for the past four months is the difference between sleeping indoors rather than out, and eating rather than going hungry. Though the check doesn’t cover a month’s rent, it puts a roof over his head on some nights. And it pays for meals when his food stamps run out.

But Orange County has proposed reducing payments to $129, an amount Tingler said will make it tough to escape life on the streets.

He said he is angry about more than losing money. He wants a say in what happens to him. “It’s the principle of it all,” said Tingler, a former airport shuttle driver who stopped working a year ago after he began to have medical problems including seizures and blackouts. “I’ve lived in Orange County my whole life and graduated from Estancia High School in Costa Mesa. I should have a right to have input. . . . I’ve never been so upset in my life.”

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Budget Targets

Community and Social Services are among the hardest hit in the proposed 1995-96 county general fund budget. Slated decreases: Health Services: 27.4% Community and Social Services: 36.8% Programs: Decrease General relief: 44.0% Social Services: 47.8% Community Services: 59.2% Aid to refugees: 100.0% Note: State-mandated Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and AFDC-Foster Care programs are to remain uncut.

Source: County Administrative Office