COUNTY DETAILS GENERAL RELIEF CRISIS.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Los Angeles County's financial situation is so dire that it needs to cut $78 million in spending on its poorest residents, county officials told a state commission Friday in a hearing on reducing general relief grants 24.5 percent.

"No one likes this idea of reducing general relief," said Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed to the Commission on State Mandates. "We don't do this lightly."

But the precariously balanced county budget already is counting on $25 million in savings this fiscal year from the reductions, Reed said, and an added $53 million would be realized next fiscal year.

After a court decision last summer threw out the county's 1993 unilateral decision to cut general relief grants to $212 per month instead of $285 per month, the county applied to the commission for permission to make the reduction.

The commission made no decision Friday, postponing that until Tuesday in Sacramento, said chairwoman Theresa Parker, the chief deputy director of the state Finance Department.

"This is a very, very difficult decision, because it does impact human beings," said Parker. "I think we all need to take the time afforded by the weekend to go through the material."

If the county can demonstrate "severe financial distress," the commission may allow the general relief reductions.

During the hearing, commission members grilled county officials about their spending choices, unspent surpluses, alternative ways of operating, efforts to find savings and other possible ways to avoid the reductions.

The county already has laid off nearly 3,000 of its 85,000 workers, closed nearly 10,000 jail beds, privatized six health clinics and eliminated or scaled back many other services, said Reed and a bevy of other county officials.

"Our fiscal crisis is real," Reed said. "Our problems in providing basic resources are genuine."

Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness, said the county could avoid cutting general relief if it did a better job handling its resources.

Erlenbusch pointed to the county's high pay rates for some workers, and its failure to collect an estimated $500 million in accounts receivable more quickly.

"This is a county in financial disarray," Erlenbusch said. "Cutting any county program will have a ripple effect on other departments. What you're being asked to choose is which cuts will kill people."

Advocates for the poor said the grants would actually increase the county's costs in other areas, by increasing homelessness and crime, and worsening the spread of tuberculosis, HIV and other communicable diseases.

"Every cent that's received is critical to the recipients and that has to be part of the deliberations," said Paul Freese Jr., directing attorney of Public Counsel's homeless assistance program.

"We should be doing everything we can to give our poorest neighbors a boost," Freese said. "General relief is an investment with a high return if it helps individuals escape a cycle of homelessness and dependency."