More Prop. 10 Tobacco Funds Arrive

By HECTOR BECERRA

Dec. 16, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In time for Christmas, Orange County early-childhood development and health care programs will receive a $19-million gift Wednesday from state tobacco taxes, pushing the year-end total to $40 million.

The money, which goes mostly to public and private nonprofit programs from clinics for high-risk infants to counseling centers to large hospitals, comes from the 50-cents-a-pack smoking levy that voters approved when they passed Proposition 10 two years ago. Proceeds were slowed by legal wrangling, and this is the first year they have been doled out to social programs.

“It’s a great year-end story for kids,” said Mike Ruane, executive director of the Children and Families Commission of Orange County, which controls the local revenue.

On Wednesday, the commission will announce as many as 50 new programs to share the $19 million, Ruane said. More than twice that number applied for funds. Next week’s announcement will be the third and last allocation of the year.

In February, the county passed out its first Proposition 10 grants, totaling $4 million. That was followed by a $17-million allocation in August, paid out to 44 programs.

The tobacco funds will flow into the county several times a year, every year, as long as smokers continue to buy cigarettes, Ruane said.

“The point is to improve school readiness for Orange County’s children by having children ready and healthy by the time they start school,” Ruane said.

Proposition 10 money is different from the tobacco settlement funds that Orange County voters overwhelmingly decided in November should be spent on health care. Those annual allotments, which will continue for a quarter of a century at a clip of up to $35 million a year, come from the national settlement of lawsuits against tobacco companies.

The Proposition 10 money so far has gone toward a variety of services, including early-childhood health care, literacy and reading, school readiness programs, mobile health vans and hiring nurses. Early-childhood programs for the disabled and shelters for battered mothers and their children have also benefited.

Allotments have ranged from tens of thousands of dollars to more than $2 million. Many went to large organizations such as UCI Medical Center, the Irvine Unified School District and St. Jude Medical Center. But smaller organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club of Garden Grove, the Jewish Community Center in Costa Mesa and the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in Santa Ana also landed grants.

“We’re very gratified. We wrote the grant proposal with passion for the people in our community,” said Carlos Jimenez, projects director of the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation, a family advocacy organization that received $533,955 in August. “I think the passion came through in our proposal. . . . But as passionate as we were in writing, we were also passionate in praying.”

In Jimenez’s case, the money will help families with children under 5, particularly those striving to become self-sufficient.

The Shelter and Hunger Partnership of Orange County, a Tustin-based nonprofit that helps families with children forced to live in motels, received more than $1 million. More than $2.5 million went to the UC Regents and UCI Medical Center for autism research.

About $550,000 has been allocated to provide child care for dozens of families identified as high risk by county Child Protective Services because of a history of abuse, alcoholism or drug addiction.

The tax has survived attacks by tobacco interests. Last month, a San Diego judge rejected a legal challenge to halt collection of the tobacco tax. And Proposition 28, a 1999 effort to repeal the tax, was voted down.

In an effort to make sure the money brings results, the commission has hired a Pittsburgh-based Internet company to track the programs’ progress, Ruane said.

“We’re not giving grants based only on workload,” he said. “We really want to reward performance.”

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Top-Funded O.C. Programs

Orange County agencies that have received the most in Proposition 10 tobacco tax funds this year:

* Children’s Hospital of Orange County -- $2.5 million

* UCI Medical Center -- $2.5 million

* Shelter & Hunger Partnership of Orange County -- $1.1 million

* California American Academy of Pediatrics -- $1.03 million

* Kinship Center - $790,000

* Catholic Charities of Orange County -- $728,287

* Mexican American Opportunities Foundation -- $683,955

* Concept 7 Family Support -- $641,250