‘Windfall’ Should Benefit the Needy

Almost every day we read newspaper articles pro and con about the airport proposed for El Toro and about the failed toll roads, which are costing the taxpayers millions of dollars to save a few people a few minutes of commute time. Now there is a huge controversy about the tobacco settlement dollars that some supervisors say they want to use as a “windfall” to retire some bankruptcy bonds and save paying interest, while others urge that the money should be used for health care.

The airport isn’t our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is the increasing gap in Orange County between the “haves” and “have-nots”: the increasing numbers of people in our county who have no health insurance, including 90,000 kids; the huge number of service-industry workers living in substandard housing or unable to find any affordable housing at all in Orange County; and the lack of an adequate public transportation system.

How is it that we can find millions to finance toll roads for the well-to-do but only a pittance for health care, housing and transportation for the working poor?

Given this scenario, it is unconscionable that some would consider the health care dollars due to come to the county from the tobacco settlement to be a “windfall” and propose to use it for any other purpose than health care. And let’s look long and hard at the needs of the half-million working poor and the underserved medically indigent population, the children without health insurance and the fragile, older adults who have little or no access to health care in the most prosperous county. Vote yes on Proposition H (for “health”) and no on G (for “government”?).

FELIX SCHWARTZ

Executive director

Orange County Health Care Agency