County Braces for Reaction to Layoff Notices

Los Angeles County officials, bracing for the possibility of violence, have heightened security as they get ready for perhaps their grimmest task ever--issuing nearly 5,200 layoff and demotion notices today as part of an effort to slash the public health care system to help solve a fiscal crisis.

As the biggest downsizing of Los Angeles County government loomed, union leaders and county officials haggled throughout the day over precisely how many county jobs could be saved, with the union arguing that it has identified 1,600 contract workers who should be laid off first.

And desperate county supervisors continued lobbying in Sacramento and Washington in a last-minute search for financial assistance to save the health care system from further ravages and to avert at least some of the planned layoffs, which are to take effect Oct. 1, when 28 community clinics and six comprehensive health centers are expected to close.

At the state Capitol, negotiations were under way between Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Pete Wilson over the dimensions of a financial aid package for the troubled county. After weeks of deadlock, the outlines of a potential compromise to shift up to $150 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to the county’s coffers took shape. Of the total, $100 million would be a loan that the county would have to repay over five years.

State Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) announced that Wilson had agreed to the transportation money and a high-level aide to the governor confirmed that Wilson would sign it. Another Democratic proposal, however, which would give the supervisors authority to put a 25-cent-a-pack tobacco tax on the ballot, fared poorly on the Assembly floor late Thursday. Coming up in the lower house for the first time, the tobacco tax bill met Republican opposition and was just two votes short of being killed. On a subsequent vote, Republicans were successful in killing the measure, but Democrats said they would try to revive it today. Wilson also opposes the local tobacco tax.

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The governor returned to California on Thursday after a presidential campaign trip to New Hampshire. Critics have faulted him for being out of the state while Los Angeles County’s and bankrupt Orange County’s financial rescue packages were awaiting action in the last hours of this year’s legislative session, which ends today.

Against that backdrop, about 200 health workers protested in South-Central Los Angeles. And the Board of Supervisors voted to impose more than $9 million in new taxes in unincorporated areas and some cities--to preserve services at county libraries.As gloom hung over the county Hall of Administration and offices countywide, the specter of mass layoff notices suddenly made the health care crisis seem more immediate to all involved.

“It is one of the darkest days of my county career, to know that some 6,700 notices of layoffs, releases and demotions are going out to county employees,” said Mike Henry, the county’s personnel director. “There has never been anything like this in the history of the county.”

Said a spokesman for the county’s largest employee union, Steve Weingarten: “The amount of stress on people is insane. People are pretty disgusted. They are anxious for their immediate future.”

At the H. Claude Hudson Comprehensive Health Center near Downtown Los Angeles, one of the facilities targeted for closure Oct. 1, administrators decided to get an early start in delivering the word to health workers about whether they will be laid off, demoted or transferred. All week they had been saying the notices would come late in the day. But concerns about employee morale and the problems of stressed-out county health workers hitting the rush hour all at once apparently convinced administrators to move up the schedule.

Nurses in the pediatrics unit were called together for a meeting late Thursday and told they would receive word early this morning. Those receiving bad news would be allowed to leave early.

Dr. Roni Vasani, assistant medical director at Hudson, said the notifications would be made through the day and patients would continue to be seen. “It will be a very difficult day, but for patients it will be business as usual,” she said. “We will see all the patients we normally would expect to see.”

Henry said targeted employees will be given packages on unemployment benefits, a job fair and other information to soften the blow. “The potential collapse of the health care operation is such an emotional trauma . . . it’s got us really on pins and needles,” he said. “I’m just hoping the employees respect the fact that we are treating them in a humane fashion.

“There will be a lot of anxiety over the next two weeks,” Henry said. “We still don’t know where we are” regarding the potential need for even more layoffs if aid from Sacramento and Washington does not come through.”

Before dawn today, the Sheriff’s Department was to go on a tactical alert that would last through next Friday. The county also was preparing to deploy an increased law enforcement presence at the county’s many clinics, comprehensive health centers and hospitals.

According to a bulletin issued Thursday afternoon to all Sheriff’s Department unit commanders, issuance of the layoff notices “could easily overwhelm the [county] safety police if problems/incidents were to occur simultaneously.”

In anticipation of that, county safety police will be pulled out of health clinics and redeployed at the county’s larger comprehensive health centers and hospitals. In their place, the bulletin said, unarmed private security guards with batons have been hired for temporary duty at health clinics beginning today, for up to a month.

Increased patrols of medical facilities by sheriff’s units also will be in place for at least the next two weeks, the bulletin said.

The potential for trouble was outlined in a special report prepared by Lt. Ricardo Cotwright, chief of the county’s safety police, that was sent to county health department managers.

“The impending downsizing of the Department of Health Services has greatly increased the potential for violence in the workplace,” Cotwright wrote.

He also said employers--such as the county--are increasingly being held legally responsible for such violent incidents. “However, through strong management commitment, day-to-day involvement of managers, supervisors, employees and labor unions, the [county] can reduce the risk and liability for workplace violence,” he wrote.

Union leaders also said they have been working closely with their rank and file in anticipation of the layoff notices, and that a massive outreach effort was scheduled for today to counsel those laid off and to disseminate as much information as possible to a work force paralyzed by uncertainty.

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The county’s major employee union, representing half of its 85,000 workers, also planned protests throughout the day.

“It is tragic,” said Gilbert Cedillo, general manager for the Service Employees International Union, Local 660. “It is an embarrassment for the county of Los Angeles. These men and women have dedicated themselves to providing a public service. . . . The disruption to each of the more than 5,000 individual households [of those people laid off] is immeasurable, and unwarranted.”

“That is the real tragedy,” Cedillo said, “but we will fight and utilize all our resources to ensure that they are still working on Oct. 1.”

Cedillo said he spent much of the day Thursday negotiating with county officials over the layoffs. The union leader said county officials have not tried hard enough to lay off contract workers before staff employees.

The union, whose rallying cry is “Don’t Agonize, Mobilize,” is encouraging employees to respond vigorously but peacefully.

“If there is [a potential for violence],” Cedillo said, “it has been created by the manner in which the county has handled this. We have tried to be as constructive as possible in mitigating the layoffs and keeping people informed.”

Nearly 5,200 Health Services employees are scheduled to get bad news today, Henry said. Of those, 2,828 current employees and 1,359 temporary workers will receive layoff notices, and 1,009 will be demoted. An additional 1,543 employees will be transferred, mostly from clinics targeted for closure. Notices will be given to employees by their immediate supervisors throughout the day.

“It is a tragedy for the . . . people directly affected tomorrow. But it is a bigger tragedy to all the people of Los Angeles,” union spokesman Weingarten said.

Friday mornings are traditionally set aside at county clinics for new patients. But since the clinics have been turning away most new patients because of the budget crisis, relatively light patient traffic is expected today.

While Thursday’s prime focus was on the health services layoffs, the Board of Supervisors met and voted 3 to 1 to impose the first tax since this year’s budget crisis began. The levy of more than $9 million this year would keep county libraries open. A $22 annual tax will be levied on homeowners in the county’s unincorporated areas and some small cities that voted to participate in a library assessment district.

Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., joined Supervisor Deane Dana in opposing the measure. Calling it an “illegal property tax,” Vosburgh said his group would sue the supervisors, as it did last year to block the county from imposing a similar tax.

The county ultimately dropped its plan to impose that tax last year, but County Counsel Gerald Crump told the board Thursday that he believed it would win a court challenge over the issue.

The library tax is one of the only taxes the supervisors can levy.

Meyer and Rabin reported from Los Angeles, Vanzi from Sacramento. Also contributing were Times staff writers Douglas P. Shuit in Los Angeles and Dave Lesher in Sacramento.

* FUTURE COST CUTS: Emphasizing outpatient care could save money. B1