County Workers Protest Plan for 500 Layoffs : Government: Officials say cuts in health staff would save $4 million and would not hurt services, but employees disagree. Board delays decision.

More than 100 county employees gathered at the Hall of Administration on Tuesday to protest a proposal to lay off nearly 500 Los Angeles County health workers, a plan that has also sparked concern about its impact on health services.

The Board of Supervisors debated the proposal and listened to testimony from the health care community for nearly two hours, but delayed its decision for a week to gather more information about the possible consequences of layoffs.

Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed and health services Director Robert C. Gates had put forward the layoff proposal to help fill a $500-million shortfall in the health department this fiscal year. However, both conceded that the layoffs would save the county only about $4 million.

County officials contend that the layoffs reflect reduced patient caseloads and will not affect services. However, workers maintain that the county’s health care system is severely over-stressed and that the job losses will only exacerbate the problems.

“We’re already working very hard and people are under an extreme amount of stress, and now they want to cut us even more,” said Irene Davis, who has worked more than 17 years at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

Davis and other workers held a noisy protest before the meeting, chanting and waving orange placards that read, “This Is Not Orange County.” While acknowledging that Los Angeles County has money problems, union representatives also contend that officials are using the recent financial problems that led to Orange County’s bankruptcy to justify unnecessary service cutbacks and layoffs.

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However, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky maintains that the Orange County analogy is apt and warned his colleagues that the county cannot afford to delay tough cutbacks for too much longer.

“To have our heads in the sand about the level of seriousness of this problem does not do us any good,” said Yaroslavsky, who noted that the county continues to have a serious cash flow problem that could oblige it to dip into its investment fund to pay the bills.

The current deficit stems from a decision by federal health authorities to deny a claim by the county for more than $600 million in Medi-Cal reimbursements. The county had included the disputed funds in its 1994-95 fiscal year budget.

Officials estimate that in the next fiscal year, 1995-96, the health budget will be more than $600 million in the red and that the county overall could be $1 billion in the hole.