Tobacco Fund Measure to Be on Orange County Ballot

County residents will vote in November on whether to spend 80% of the county’s about $30 million a year in national tobacco settlement funds on health care and anti-smoking programs.

Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever on Wednesday certified the ballot initiative submitted by health care advocates and the American Assn. of Retired Persons, effectively launching the campaign for its passage.

The health care group, which has renamed itself Taxpayers for Reduced Healthcare Costs, filed 115,000 signatures on May 17, a day after a majority of the county’s Board of Supervisors rejected a compromise plan to spend 60% on health care and the rest on other programs.

“We did a random check of the petitions, and far more than the required [71,206] signatures were filed,” Lever said.

Orange County is slated to receive $765 million over 25 years, its share of the state’s $21.3 billion from the settlement reached between the nation’s major tobacco companies and the states’ attorneys general. The county already has begun using this year’s allotment, spending $38 million on debt reduction.

The initiative, meanwhile, calls for spending 19% for services to seniors and the disabled, including transportation, long-term care and in-home support; 23% to pay for indigent care by emergency and on-call physicians; 12% for tobacco prevention and anti-addiction and mental health programs; 20% for community, mobile and hospital clinics; 6% for hospitals to fund uncompensated emergency and trauma care, and 20% for law enforcement.

County officials and three supervisors favor spending most of the money on debt reduction and jail expansion.

So far, no organized opposition has surfaced to the ballot measure, but the Orange County Deputy Sheriffs Assn. and former Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle have been widely mentioned as potential leaders of such a movement.

Pringle said Wednesday that he has had discussions with a number of people about opposing the initiative, which he called “a terrible way to do county budgeting.” He declined to identify any opponents, but critics of the initiative have said it would improperly tie the hands of future elected county supervisors.

“I believe there will be an organized opposition to the initiative because it is bad public policy,” Pringle said.

The president of the Deputy Sheriffs Assn., Wayne Quint, said his group had “not yet” decided whether to oppose the measure.

Supporters of the measure include doctors and hospital groups, as well as the Coalition of Orange County Community Clinics, state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Garden Grove) and former county supervisor and state senator Marian Bergeson. It also has been endorsed by Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, the American Heart Assn., the League of Women Voters and other groups and by U.S. Reps. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), and state Assembly members Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel), Ken Maddux (R-Garden Grove), Bill Campbell (R-Orange), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) and GOP Assembly Minority Leader Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach).

In organizing its campaign, the health coalition last month asked 15 public relations and political consulting firms to submit proposals to run the election drive. They have received responses from about a dozen firms from Orange County to Sacramento with campaign budgets ranging from $230,000 to $2.4 million, said Michele Revelle, spokeswoman for the group.

The health coalition has yet to decide how much money it wants to spend or how much it needs to raise, Revelle said.

“We will calibrate the response according to the opposition we face,” she said.