The price of dirt, Part 2

 
 
Next the supervisors took up state cuts to funds provided through Proposition 1A (2006, Legislature’s ability to divert gas tax funds for other uses, treating the diversion as a termed loan). Assistant CEO Brown told the supervisors that the state has taken $6.1 million in county funds. It’s a loan the state has to pay back by June 2013. However, the supervisors could choose to securitize the loan and get the county’s money back this year in the market, Brown suggested. The caveat is that because of the creditworthiness of the state, the security instrument may be discounted so deeply in the market that it may be a significant hit. At this point, the CEO’s office was asking authorization to explore securitization.
 
Securitization would mean that the loan, presumably a cash-flow producing asset, would be packaged into a security instrument and sold to investors.
 
The supervisors’ wrath against the state knew no bounds.
 
Walsh fulminated that the only people that will lend money to the state are people who have no choice -- the counties.
 
Chairwoman Deidre Kelsey said, “The state got its big bump on property taxes just like we did. We saved ours. WE were pretty damned prudent. The state spent every cent it had. When you see the state approving purchases of wetlands around Long Beach while other things are going on, it’s shocking to me. We are a subdivision of the state and they have the opportunity to pick our pockets at will.”
 
In California, development projects are decided by local land-use authorities, like Merced County and its cities. The state did not make Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties the foreclosure-rate capital of the nation. That was achieved by its local leaders' land-use policies.
 
The item passed unanimously.
 
The next item was about staff reductions in the Mental Health Department, reductions of outside contracts, cutting back a mental clinic in Livingston from five to three days a week, and eliminating six vacant positions and laying off 34 Mental Health employees.
 
Manuel Jimenez, who has been department director for four months, talked about trying to find a design the department’s core mission assuming 10, 20, 30, or 40-percent cuts. “Unfortunately, the rain came before the ark was built. We couldn’t save all the programs but we are saving Community United by Empowerment (CUBE) with staff reductions,” he said, adding that he may be able get three back as interns because they are in college. The state cut managed care by 50 percent and eliminated Prop. 36, a drug rehabilitation program, he added.
 
The public comment on this item began with an Atwater contractor for the department.  “We will be providing services to other counties, not yours as a result of these cuts,” she said.
 
A recovering addict and county employee said that three family members also ex-addicts and that three members of family work for the county. She works in dependency drug court, helping to restore families, she said.  She has served more than 40 clients in 4 years, and only lost two, she claimed.” These were hard core addicts probably going to lose their kids.” Her program claimed nearly 50-percent success with long-range addicts.
 
She noted that the state is going to be releasing addicts from prisons soon. “We are already overwhelmed. People don’t stay clean when they are on a waiting list. They continue to use and commit crimes.” She mentioned that she has two foster kids, orphaned by murder, they need psychiatric care and won’t be able to get it with the cuts in Mental Health.
 
“I lived inside a problem, heroin addiction, for 25 years,” she said. “Now I am a hope fiend. Now I find solutions. This county helped me live that way. I know that together we can.”
 
A woman who provides food for the CUBE said that she did not get benefits, retirement, but has complete job satisfaction providing for hungry, often sleepless, homeless teenagers with place to bathe wash their clothes, sleep and do homework.  She said she would prefer that “big people take larger cuts to let the people really serving the community go on doing it.” In this crisis, she said, she though “paper pushers” ought to be sidelined in favor of people actually working in the community.
 
 A mental health clinician, whose position may be cut, said, “Our services bring in the dollars. When line staff is cut, the services eventually stop …The board of supervisors doesn’t know what ‘clients first’ means.”
 
Kristie Waskiewicz, the AFSCME rep, said: “Bumping rights was in the contract language in 1981 when I got here. I know we have tried to amend that language to bring it more into line with HSA and Child Support Services that doesn’t penalize people for switching jobs. At that time, the county wasn’t interested in ‘rewarding people for department hopping.’ We’re delighted to talk about it now if the county is interested.”
 
She added that there is no effective date for managers to throw in their 5-percent cuts. “If we’re going to do anything to save these people we’ll have to do it, not just talk.”
 
Waskiewicz complained of inadequate time to review the budget. She said she received it late in the afternoon on the previous Friday. Local environmentalists give her the Boo-Hoo of the Week Award.
 
She noted that the Mental Health budget looked like the cuts exceed the revenues and that some of the contract cuts exceed the mandates of the contracts and jeopardize other grants” If you lose what little you have, your problem only gets bigger,” she warned. She added that the budget information was incomplete, a reason for not taking a decision on it. She spoke as if she imagined the supervisors had actually read the budget anymore than they’ve ever read an environmental impact report.
 
“In Mental Health you’re proposing to eliminate the revenue producers,” she said. “How is that fiscally sound? Their services are billable. Do we want more untreated addicts and mentally ill that have not been diagnosed? What about danger to rest of community. We’ve seen how untreated mentally ill can be a real danger to everybody else…You have a moral, ethical as well as legal obligation to explore other options before lay offs. Do the right thing and reject these layoffs.”
 
A CUBE staffer told the supervisors, “You guys are our parents. We depend on you for our support, to help us get along in our lives. By firing our staff, crime rate might go up, more homeless on the streets.”
 
A homeless man threatened to just jump in front of a train noting that a man who couldn’t get his medication stormed the courthouse last year. “Who would I have to talk to without Mental Health Services,” he asked. “And if I don’t have anyone to talk to I might listen to that little voice saying, well I can’t get my medication anymore because you cut my resources so I might just go out and kill myself. So maybe drop down some of the higher staff whose making uh uh big 401 K money and all that just to keep these little people here who’s helping, because these people are doing a very good job of take care of us. Please don’t cut the resources.”
 
Holly Karem, social worker, gesturing to youthful clients around her in the audience, asked, “What do you think of my youth? If we’d had more notice we would have been able to bring more. I do more than provide transportation services – when everyone else doesn’t answer their calls, they call me. I do crisis intervention, self advocacy, job searches. Removing these positions will likely result in more hospitalization, increased crime rate, severe loss of services. Continuing will ultimately cost the county less and will create more taxpaying members of society.”
 
A 10-year veteran mental health worker said she’d started at bottom, extended her education to become a therapist to serve children and teens, some of them in the room. “One of our mottos is ‘Continuity of care.’ What does that mean with all the cuts going on? I’ll participate in furloughs if it will save my jobs and my colleagues’ jobs.”
 
CEO Tatum asked Mental Health Director Jimenez, “Could we have helped ourselves with billable hours?”
 
Jimenez replied, “Yes we could have. Goal is 65-percent billable per staffer,” which, if you will notice, is not quite an answer to the question.
 
Supervisor Walsh asked how close he was to that goal.
 
Jimenez blamed the departmental computer system for not being able to answer the question; however, he said that two months ago it averaged 20 percent across the board. “We’re also decreasing doctors’ appointments from 30 to 20 minutes,” he added. “The state will reimburse for Medical as much as we can bill. That’s the only revenue we really have control over.”
 
Supervisor Nelson asked, “How do you get from 20 to 65 percent?”
 
Jimenez said that those come out of realignment dollars (Prop. 1A).
 
Nelson: “Those on the chopping block.”
 
Jimenez: Yes.
 
Kelsey said that she “totally understands need for mental health services. Delivery is always a financial scramble. No stable source of funding but an on-going problem in society. I betcha nobody in this room doesn’t know someone affected by mental illness or drug addiction, closely linked. The governor is devastating the entire state. How far can we reach into our reserves when we can’t predict the economic future? It is a matter of how much risk the board agrees is acceptable.”
 
Nelson moved to accept staff’s recommendations. He said he’s not heartless, just more logical. He said he recognizes “these are our friends and neighbors whose jobs we’re cutting here. Government employees pay taxes and provide vital services out here.”
 
Supervisor Pedrozo opened his mouth but in this instance was not able to connect with a coherent phrase, let alone a full sentence.
 
Walsh blathered in high dudgeon at the state because of cumulative damage, “The state is decimating our safety net. We haven’t even gotten to health and human services yet. We need to revisit this depending on Jimenez’ redesign.”
 
He seconded the motion.
 
Supervisor O’Banion said: “It is  a shame what the state’s done, may not get any better in the years to come, and we have two or three more terrible decisions to make today. Thanks the young folk who came in to testify, means a lot to the social workers, hopefully some of the programs will be saved.”
 
Nelson asked Tatum to confirm this is a several-year downturn.
 
Tatum said, “We’re looking at a $15-billion hole the state has for the coming year. They paved over their roads with your property taxes, paved over the budget with reductions in mental health and human services cuts – we just don’t know what else they’re going to do, which leaves you vulnerable We offer you caution.
 
The staff recommendation to reduce outside contracts, cut back a mental clinic in Livingston from five to three days a week, eliminate six vacant positions and lay off 34 Mental Health employees passed unanimously.
 
The peculiar thing about what Tatum said is that the state has been looking at $9-15-billion holes in its budget since the energy companies gamed electrical deregulation in 2001. It’s more than that. It has to do with great decreases in property taxes and sales taxes. What the state Legislature was dealing with this year was a $42-billion deficit, nearly twice as big as the deficit at the end of 2001, when the real estate bubble was beginning to take off. And while Kelsey is appalled at the state buying wetlands in Southern California, the governor has been proposing another bond initiative of more than $10 billion for a peripheral canal and two reservoirs. Bonds have to be repaid and the lowest bond rating in the nation requires the state to repay them at junk-bond interest rates.
 
Our leaders, who rolled over for the developers, beginning with the largest -- the University of California -- are now rolling over on the most vulnerable of their citizens. It's a crummy show and in the coming parts of "The price of dirt," it will get worse.
 
End Part 2.