A Measured View of Tobacco Fund Vote

Every so often a ballot measure rolls around that forces me to screw on my thinking cap extra tight.

So it is this year with Measures G and H, which are dueling for Orange County voters’ approval on how to spend a windfall from the national tobacco settlement.

Measure H supporters collected 115,000 signatures to get it on the Nov. 7 ballot. They want 80% of the tobacco money spent on health-related items, with the other 20% going to the Sheriff’s Department.

Measure G, a counteroffensive from the Board of Supervisors, would have 40% spent on health expenditures. The other 60% would go to the Sheriff’s Department and for bankruptcy debt reduction.

Putting the numbers aside for a moment, the measures are a test of who decides how to spend the money.

That’s the issue that taxes my decision-making powers.

I’d argue that the Board of Supervisors should decide how to spend money for the county. That’s what the supervisors are elected to do, and if we don’t like how they decide to spend it, we can vote them out.

Aiding and abetting that argument is my dislike for ballot initiatives in which interest groups--even noble ones like the health coalition behind Measure H--try to set policy at the ballot box.

Normally then, those two positions would tilt me toward Measure G. It would be a vote not for the board, but for representative government and against ballot-box initiatives.

However . . .

I have an abiding dislike of the tobacco industry. Part of it is personal; my father died at 70 of heart disease, and his 30-plus years of smoking no doubt contributed significantly.

Yes, he knew smoking wasn’t healthful, but that doesn’t exempt the tobacco industry from its shameful marketing of the potentially deadly weed over the decades.

Things Not to Like in G and H

What I’m saying is I’m all for socking it to Big Tobacco.

Of course, Big Tobacco has been socked already, but which way to vote, H or G?

That’s why I talked this week to Brennan Cassidy, the medical director for a group of urgent-care centers in four Orange County cities and a leading proponent of Measure H.

I tell Cassidy of my philosophical leaning but ask him to talk me into voting for Measure H.

“How do you feel about unfunded mandates?” is his first question.

I don’t like those either, and he says that’s at the heart of Measure H. The county, he argues, has had a legal responsibility to pay for indigent medical care but has reneged badly in recent years.

Indigent patients who visit emergency or trauma centers sometimes need a wide range of follow-up care--and many of those costs have been borne by hospitals and physicians, Cassidy says.

If nothing else, Cassidy says, the tobacco money would be a form of payback for health care money the county should have been spending but hasn’t.

On top of that, Cassidy says, the windfall isn’t really Orange County money, in that local taxpayers aren’t providing it. The local share, which he says has been estimated to be $30 million a year for the next 25 years, is part of the huge national settlement between the states and the major tobacco companies. Even the tobacco companies wanted to earmark this money for health-related programs.

To put an even finer point on it, Cassidy says, only three of the five supervisors support Measure G.

Still, my big question: What about a local or state government’s prerogative to budget for its domain?

“We feel it’s the voters’ prerogative to put an initiative on the ballot and tell the supervisors how voters would like to spend that money,” Cassidy says, “if they’re making what voters think are poor decisions.”

The issue has many other nuances and debatable elements. They’ve either been aired already or will be in the next month.

Cassidy hasn’t swayed me with his argument that initiatives should supplant elected officials as decision-makers. But on every other count, he’s plenty persuasive.

For me, then, it comes down to this:

Misgivings aside, when the worst that can happen with Measure H is that millions of dollars go to county health care, how wrong can you be in supporting it?

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers can reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.