Board Told Health Cuts May Become Costly : County: Budget proposal would reduce care for mentally ill and might have an adverse financial effect in the long run, officials say.

Large budget cuts proposed for Ventura County’s mental health programs and public hospital system could cost the county more money over time than they would save in the short run, officials warned county leaders Wednesday.

Directors of the Library Services Agency and the Public Social Services Agency also voiced concerns about the effects of major cutbacks proposed for their departments during a Board of Supervisors budget study session.

But the $1.9-million cut being considered for the county’s Mental Health Department would be the largest single reduction of any department by far this fiscal year, Director Randall Feltman reminded supervisors.

“The budget proposal seems to indicate that mental health service is a very low priority with the county,” Feltman said at the outset of his presentation to the board. “The proposal would result in substantial service reductions.”

If the cut is approved, it would mean a loss of 29 hospital, residential and nursing-home beds reserved for the mentally ill, he said.

“Consider the mental health department a risk manager for persons who are severely ill,” he said. “We can either manage the risk adequately or less adequately. If we don’t manage adequately, it’s going to increase public hospital costs, police costs and general relief costs.”

Feltman also warned that the county could receive less federal funding in the future if his department’s $38.6-million budget is cut this year. He said the federal government is proposing to limit the amount of Medi-Cal money allocated to his department based on this year’s budget.

“If we reduce services this year, that reduction could potentially reduce services in future years,” Feltman said. He said that his department is already operating as efficiently as possible, having reduced expenses by more than $5 million over the last five years.

In a presentation to the board Wednesday, Pierre Durand, director of the Ventura County Medical Center, focused on the hospital’s contribution to the local economy and how a large reduction in its budget could have far-reaching consequences. Supervisors are proposing to slash the county’s $5.5-million subsidy to the hospital by $1.6 million.

For the county’s small investment, Durand told supervisors, the hospital receives in return more than $121 million in revenues, mostly in state and federal funds. That money is then pumped back into the economy through the more than 1,200 people employed by the hospital, he said.

“We are an economic force in the county,” Durand said. “It’s estimated that there’s about $300 million of economic impact every year that the medical system has in the county.”

Durand said the county’s hospital system, which had a $40-million deficit in 1987, has managed to eliminate its debt and increase its revenues since then, largely through the opening of satellite health clinics throughout the county.

Despite the hospital’s progress, he said, the demand for county health services is on the rise, not only from the poor but from working people whose employers cannot afford to provide them with medical insurance.

“We are the safety net,” he said. “And every year, there’s a growth of the safety net.”

Meanwhile, Dixie Adeniran, the director of the Library Services Agency, told supervisors that the agency will have little choice but to discontinue its adult and preschool literacy programs and close seven of its 16 branch libraries if the county cannot come up with the $1.6 million it is seeking. The county is proposing to give the library system, which has a budget of $6.3 million, only half that amount.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said he is working on a plan that could do away with the county agency and create a library system that would be run by cities. That way, he said, cities could keep the property tax revenue that goes to the agency and form partnerships with other cities to reduce overhead costs.

Schillo said he hopes to have more details available for the board when it begins making final budget decisions July 25.

James Isom, director of the county’s social services agency, said that the $1.3-million budget cut his department is facing could be absorbed mostly through some reorganization in administration.

But he suggested that the department, whose budget is now $129 million, may have to cut the $164,000 it spends to support the office that helps veterans obtain benefits and services.

“I don’t feel that we have any other choice,” Isom said. “It’s not a mandated program.”