County to Help Staff Deal With Quake Probe : Disaster aid: Workers told they may refuse interviews in federal inquiry over health department’s claims.

Los Angeles County officials have begun an effort to protect their employees’ rights during federal inquiries into whether the county Department of Health Services improperly sought disaster funds after the Northridge earthquake, according to memos obtained by The Times on Tuesday.

One of the memos, by Principal Deputy County Counsel Karen A. Lichtenberg, pointedly tells workers in all county departments: “You may refuse to participate in an interview. If you choose to participate in an interview, you can terminate the interview at any time. . . . If you are requested to prepare or sign a document, you may refuse to do so.”

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors disclosed that they have joined a Federal Emergency Management Agency probe of claims filed by the health department.

“The investigation I am doing has just barely started,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. David Ringnell, of the U.S. attorney’s office civil fraud section. He said the “preliminary” investigation “involves the Department of Health Services and its various disaster claims.”

Ringnell said his investigation was launched several months ago and will be conducted in conjunction with FEMA. The Times reported Tuesday that FEMA investigators are looking into whether the county improperly tried to get more than $1 million in quake repair money for medical equipment and furniture at a health center that has since been demolished, the Mid-Valley Comprehensive Health Center in Van Nuys. Also under review is whether the health center sustained bad enough damage to warrant demolition.

In addition, FEMA is questioning whether cracks and other damage at County-USC Medical Center’s psychiatric hospital were the result of last year’s Northridge earthquake--as the county has claimed--or were caused by prior earthquakes or general wear and tear.

Ringnell said the U.S. attorney’s office would represent FEMA in any civil action it might take to recover federal earthquake money if it is determined that the funds were improperly obtained.

County officials, saying there has been no fraud in the earthquake recovery effort, have made it clear that they believe FEMA’s tactics are excessively heavy-handed. The agency is so aggressive, county officials say, that they are now telling employees they do not have to answer questions.

Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed has gone so far as to write FEMA’s Inspector General, George J. Opfer, saying in an Aug. 15 letter: “While we invite your review of our claims and claims process, we are concerned with appropriate protocol. This concern is supported by early contacts by your staff which were unannounced and by some interviews where potentially inappropriate requests were made of employees for personal information.”

Reed is on vacation, but her second-in-command, Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Sandra Davis, said that employees have been asked to provide driver’s license, Social Security and home telephone numbers “and other things. . . . People indicated that if they were going to sign something [they] wanted a copy of it and were told they would not get it.”

In a memo to department heads and the Board of Supervisors, also dated Aug. 15, Reed alerted the county’s top managers that FEMA’s inspector general was looking into “certain elements of our Northridge earthquake claims process,” and told the bureaucrats that county employees should be advised of their rights before being interviewed.

“The memorandum is to alert you to their presence,” said the memo, issued in Reed’s name but signed by Davis, “and establish appropriate county protocol under which you should notify our office of any [Office of Inspector General] contact and advise your potentially affected employees of their rights and responsibilities should they be interviewed.”

In an interview Tuesday, Davis said, “I wanted to make sure what we were doing and what they were doing is being done appropriately--there are proper protocols and we all need to be following those, so the workplace is not disrupted, but that if there is something they need they can get it.”

Another county memo, written Aug. 10 by Lichtenberg, also tells employees that they can bring “a county employee of your choice” with them during the questioning by FEMA’s inspector general officials, and it advises county workers that they do not have to prepare or sign any documents or statements, or participate in any interviews.

The county is seeking billions of dollars in FEMA money to rebuild or replace hospitals, health centers and hundreds of other facilities. But FEMA, to the chagrin of county officials, has rejected many of those claims as far beyond what it would take to repair the buildings.

The investigations, however, involve whether there was any wrongdoing--intentional or not--in the applications for reimbursement.

At the county supervisors’ weekly meeting Tuesday, board Chairwoman Gloria Molina said FEMA’s efforts to look into the health services department were “standard operating procedure.” Such audits, she said, are conducted during each major application for earthquake monies from FEMA.

Leland Wilson, a FEMA public assistance officer who is responsible for “public assistance” applications from government entities, told the board that the Office of Inspector General is wholly independent and does not tell the regular FEMA staff what it is investigating. But in a subsequent interview, he said the inspector general does not audit all aid applications.

“It is not routine for them to look at every project,” Wilson said. “It is their job to follow up allegations of fraud.”

Representatives of the inspector general’s field office in Pasadena would not comment on their procedures or on the nature of their investigations.