Planned County Budget to Cut 1,200 Health Jobs

By JOSH MEYER and JEFFREY L. RABIN

April 22, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Los Angeles County’s chief fiscal officer Monday released a precariously balanced budget that envisions eliminating at least 1,200 positions in the vast public health system.

The $12-billion spending blueprint unveiled by Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen includes some increases in staffing and services in other areas, including the Sheriff’s Department, which would get new personnel to fully operate the Twin Towers jail near downtown.

Janssen’s budget proposal is fraught with potential risk for the county, because it assumes the receipt of state and federal funds whose allocation remains uncertain and fails to include hundreds of millions of dollars in potential county financial obligations.

If contradicted by events, those assumptions, some county officials predicted, could lead to far more painful cutbacks in services and jobs down the line.

Even so, the budget proposal outlined by the low-key Janssen to a packed news conference at the Hall of Administration is far less severe than those offered by his predecessor, Sally Reed. In 1995, she even proposed closing down the nation’s largest public hospital, County-USC Medical Center, to pull the county away from the brink of bankruptcy.

That infuriated at least one of Reed’s bosses, Supervisor Gloria Molina. On Monday, by contrast, several supervisors appeared content with their top executive’s recommendations.

“There are a lot of contingencies--and they are big-numbered contingencies,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Board of Supervisors. But, he added, “the county is in better shape than it was two years ago or last year, but it’s [still] not in adequate shape.”

The supervisors are set to begin deliberating on Janssen’s budget immediately, and could adopt it in principle as early as today, so they can begin cobbling together their final spending plan.

To balance the budget as required by law, Janssen recommended widespread but unspecified cuts in the Department of Health Services to close a projected $120-million deficit in that department. Under Janssen’s plan, hundreds of employees could be laid off and critically needed positions would go unfilled.

To downsize the nation’s second-largest public health system, Janssen assumes in his budget that the supervisors will follow through on their commitment to privatize the county’s rehabilitation hospital, Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey, beginning July 1.

But the move to turn over that nationally renowned complex has not been finalized. And if it is, more than 1,300 county positions at Rancho Los Amigos would be eliminated.

The budget also assumes that the county will privatize High Desert Hospital in the Antelope Valley, making it a smaller comprehensive health center, at the cost of another 380 positions.

The loss of county health care jobs to privatization was approved by the supervisors two years ago, so only 1,200 reductions are new. If Janssen’s plan is adopted and the supervisors follow through on their commitment to privatize, 2,880 jobs will be eliminated.

And still faced with a nagging gap in the health budget, Janssen decided to count on $67 million in savings from as yet unspecified steps to make the overall health system more efficient. That, he estimated, could cost another 1,200 positions.

He also declined to include any pay increases for the county’s 80,000-plus full-time employees. While thanking them for their efforts, Janssen said there “simply isn’t the money to pay” for raises.

Both of those moves prompted immediate and angry responses from county union leaders, who said their rank and file have unfairly borne the brunt of the county’s fiscal crisis, working without raises or even cost-of-living increases for as long as five years.

Alejandro Stephens, president of Service Employees International Union Local 660, said he was insulted. “For him to ignore the [union’s] contributions and give us lip service that we have been doing a good job is not enough,” Stephens said. “I think he shirked his responsibility by not putting it in the budget.”

SEIU, the county’s largest labor union, will do anything it has to--including negotiations, work slowdowns and even strikes--to get long-promised raises for its 40,000 members, whose contracts are up in six months, Stephens said. “The fight,” he added, “has just begun.”

Such sentiments were exacerbated by Janssen’s proposed personnel increases, which include: 304 new positions in the Department of Public Social Services to expand its much-praised GAIN welfare-to-work program; 718 positions in the Sheriff’s Department to operate Twin Towers; 115 positions in the Mental Health Department to help it deal with serious problems among the mentally ill in county jails; and 331 positions in the Children and Family Services Department to better cope with increasingly overwhelming caseloads.

Some of those increases will be paid for with state and federal dollars, while others came through increased “efficiencies” in many departments countywide, Janssen said.

Others were “paid for” by assuming revenues that may never arrive and ignoring costs that probably will come due.

The proposal, for instance, does not address what the county should do if $52 million in tentative state funds for juvenile probation camps fails to materialize, and if voters don’t overwhelmingly approve a June 3 measure to pay for $60 million in fire and library services.

Janssen’s budget also does not account for court rulings that may force the county to repay $50 million it received from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and more than $130 million in welfare payments that a judge ruled the county supervisors illegally took from their poorest constituents.

In addition, the county also could have to pay as much as $131 million if the ongoing overhaul of the welfare system forces it to assume responsibility for legal immigrants dropped from the federal Supplemental Security Income rolls.

Janssen’s oblique comment on those possibilities was, “You don’t jump off the bridges till you get to them.”

Janssen did, however, say that nothing the supervisors can do would eliminate the larger problem of the state and federal government placing increasing demands on the county in health, welfare and public safety services without paying the county the money needed to provide them.

To restore balance to the county’s finances, the state must begin fully paying for those required services, and the state must give back more than $1 billion in property taxes it took from the county in recent years, Janssen said.

Neither of those things seem likely in the foreseeable future. But the former San Diego County administrative officer said county officials have launched a legislative lobbying effort to gain more control over their finances.

Still, he said, far more needs to be done.

“Although the Board of Supervisors has made significant reductions in budget expenditures and employee count, we continue to struggle with budget gaps and an inability to meet critical needs,” Janssen said. “We are rapidly approaching the point where the only solution to the ongoing problem is in the hands of the state and federal government.”

If such wholesale changes do not occur, Janssen said, the county will find itself with too many demands for services and not enough money to pay for them. “That’s the vise that we find ourselves in,” Janssen said.

Nevertheless, Janssen insisted that the county will get through the next fiscal year without resorting to the kind of quick-fix shortcuts to balance its budget that got it in financial trouble in the first place.

“Let me make one thing clear: Even though the budget is precarious, even though we have this vise, even though we believe the state and federal government are the ones that have to solve the structural problem, the board and I will manage this organization within the dollars we have available,” Janssen said. “We will do it.”

Throughout his presentation, Janssen stressed that the county’s top priority for local funds is public safety, including the Sheriff’s Department, the courts and the district attorney, probation and public defender’s offices, followed by health care.

To that end, Janssen’s spending plan anticipates full funding of the Twin Towers jail, thanks to lease agreements with the state and federal government, which will provide an additional $55.1 million and add 1,800 jail beds to the system.

Unlike previous years, Janssen’s budget does not call for the closure of county parks, libraries or fire stations.

Instead, it leaves the fate of county library and fire services in the hands of the voters, who he said must understand the simple fact that if the money is not available, the services must be cut.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Where the Money Goes

Here is a look at the proposed 1997-98 budget for Los Angeles County:

Social Services: 32%

Special funds, districts: 22%

Public Safety: 20%

Health: 19%

Other: 7%

****

WINNERS (Staff gains)

Twin Towers jail: 718

Welfare-to-work program: 304