This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press April
24, 2001.
By LISA WAHLA
Valley Press Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES - While the Los Angeles County budget is generally healthy, twin crises are brewing: The Health Department's projected long-term deficits and the statewide energy situation threaten to derail the county's in-the-black progress.
That statement came from Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen as he announced on Monday the county's $16 billion budget for 2001-02.
The proposed budget, 2.7% higher than this year's, is expected to be accepted by the Board of Supervisors today before going to a public review period May 10. The new fiscal year begins July 1.
Costs for both electricity and natural gas for the current budget year shot skyward: the county planned to spend $54.4 million on electricity and $20.9 million for natural gas in 2000-01, but will likely pay $65.7 million and $65.6 million, respectively.
Uncertainty surrounding the power situation makes forecasting the next fiscal year's costs difficult. Janssen said a 2001-02 budget first proposed spending $69.6 million on electricity and $50.3 million on natural gas, but those figures have risen to $75.3 million and $65.6 million.
This year the extra energy money is coming out of individual departments' budgets and an existing fund balance, money budgeted but not spent this fiscal year.
One idea yet to be proposed to supervisors would help county employees deal with a long, warm and potentially blacked-out summer: a "casual dress summer" that would ease dress codes as thermostats inch higher.
Janssen said thermostat temperatures haven't been proposed, but he remembered a similar "casual" situation during the energy crisis of the 1970s.
The Health Department's $2.8 billion budget includes $84.9 million in re-engineering savings, as the county attempts to reckon with an estimated $900 million deficit in 2004-05 when a five-year federal waiver expires.
"The second five-year waiver doesn't solve the structural deficit in the Health Department," Janssen said. Instead, he said, it allows county leaders time to restructure, reconfigure services and add revenue to a department that is uncompensated for 85% of the care it provides.
A five-year strategic plan approved by the Board of Supervisors last year provides guidelines for cutting costs but includes hundreds of millions in "unresolved" savings. If expected savings aren't realized, one contingency measure called for exploring closing Lancaster's High Desert Hospital, an idea that prompted public outcry last month.
"The five-year plan doesn't solve all the problems - the problems are larger than the five-year plan," Janssen said.
About a dozen representatives from Service Employees International Union Local 660 attended the Monday press conference, arguing that cuts are unnecessary if fund-raising is vigorously pursued.
The strategic plan for saving money next year includes closing as-yet unidentified health clinics and eliminating 438 vacant positions.
But the positions are "direly needed to be filled," and contribute to costly high levels of overtime, registered nurse Patty Margaret said.
Union representatives believe the county should improve its fund-finding ability, and they promised to lobby state lawmakers to change the system. More employers should be required to provide health coverage, and the state should pay more for caring for the uninsured, they said.
"Why take it out on the hospitals? They should make it up some other place - the sick people have to be taken care of," said Margaret, a Local 660 steward. The county should consider its budget as a whole and not expect the hospitals to pay for themselves, she added.
In addition, Janssen said, the county will lose another billion dollars in property taxes this year, money the state takes to help pay for education. Of that amount, $400 million represents a shortfall for which the county is not compensated.
Education revenue augmenta-tion funds, or ERAF, was a system enacted in the early 1990s when the recession threatened basic state services such as schooling. Though the economy rebounded throughout the decade, the state's money grab continued.
"The state doesn't want to hear us whining, but if we had that $400 million in the general fund, we wouldn't be looking at cuts in the Health Department," Janssen said.
The Antelope Valley will benefit from several park and recreation improvements, including a new gymnasium at Littlerock's Jackie Robinson Park. Vasquez Rocks Regional Park in Agua Dulce will get a new nature center, and the Arrastre Canyon Trail project in Acton will move ahead.