Smith Opposes Tobacco Fund Plan

Board of Supervisors Chairman Chuck Smith announced his opposition Monday to a compromise plan for spending tobacco settlement funds, a decision that appeared likely to ensure a November ballot fight over how Orange County uses its $765-million portion of the national settlement.

Supervisors are to vote today on the proposal to split the funds, which was drafted in meetings over the past three weeks between health care advocates and Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Cynthia Coad, who represented the five-member board.

The compromise plan would require the county to allot 60% of the settlement money to health care, and it also would commit the county to spend a minimum of $40 million in general fund money annually on health care.

Health care advocates gave the supervisors until today to agree to the proposal or face the ballot initiative, which would mandate spending 80% of tobacco funds on health care. Officials with the health care coalition--the Citizens Health Alliance to Reinvest the Tobacco Settlement--said they will file more than 100,000 signatures Wednesday that have been collected to qualify the initiative for the November ballot if supervisors reject the proposal.

Smith and Coad’s opposition to deciding how future boards must spend general fund revenue appeared to kill the plan, since Supervisor Jim Silva previously has voted against committing the county to spending most of the tobacco settlement on health care.

The health coalition, backed by doctors, hospitals, the American Assn. of Retired Persons and community clinics, says it has far more than the 71,000 signatures required to qualify an initiative for the ballot.

The initiative calls for spending the tobacco money on health and dental care for the indigent, increased payments for community clinics and emergency rooms and trauma doctors, as well as health transportation for seniors. It would allot 20% of the funds to law enforcement.

In announcing his opposition, Smith said he favors spending most of the settlement funds to build jail facilities and repay county debt. But his key objection to the proposal is that it crossed a fiscal boundary.

“Any attempt by health care advocates to control the General Fund expenditures for future Boards is not acceptable,” Smith wrote in a letter sent Monday to his board colleagues. “Any agreement should deal with Tobacco Settlement Funds only.”

Coad, who on Monday declined to say how she would vote, took sharp issue with the proposal. She noted that despite three weeks of talks she was unable to secure all she wanted in the compromise, particularly having enough money left to build a drug-and-alcohol treatment center for inmates before 2013.

“There are a lot of things that need to be addressed,” she said. “We are talking about tobacco settlement money and it has spilled over into demands on general funds.”

Spitzer declined Monday to say how he would vote. Supervisor Tom Wilson could not be reached for comment.

For more than a year, county officials and health care community representatives have debated, then argued over, how to spend the tobacco settlement funds. The county is to receive about $765 million in the first 25 years of the settlement, according to estimates made in March by the California Independent Auditor’s Office. That is down substantially from earlier estimates of $900 million because of a predicted 3% annual decline in smoking. The settlement is based on tobacco companies’ revenues and allotted to counties by population.