EDITORIAL\How to spell relief\L.A. County makes its case for easing a state mandate. But it's\not enough.

A state panel certainly had sufficient evidence when it agreed last week that Los Angeles County is financially distressed. It's been that way for several years.

Example No. 1 is the county's massive health-care system. It faced crippling cuts last year until the county received a reprieve from Washington in the form of a promise by President Clinton for $364 million in federal funds. Those funds, however, have been withheld because the county has not yet submitted a cost-cutting restructuring plan that is acceptable to Washington.

Restructuring the health system, however, would solve only some of the county's problems. So the Board of Supervisors requested the financial-distress finding from the state Commission on Mandates so it could reduce state-mandated general-relief grants, which now are $285 a month, to $212 a month.

This isn't a happy solution since $212 a month hardly is enough to keep body and soul together. Nevertheless, the alternatives to reducing relief payments aren't appealing, either, since they would require deep cuts in other programs, including health and public safety.

Tuesday's preliminary ruling by the commission is encouraging. However, it only promises to provide temporary relief. The county might be in the same position a year or two from now if the state fails to provide it with more money (the state actually took more than $1 billion away from the county in 1992 and 1993) or reduce mandates, such as for general relief.

Since it seems unlikely that local voters would approve higher county taxes - and run the risk that the state will find a way to take some of the money away or impose more mandates - the state needs to step in.

The logical thing for Sacramento to do is to assume responsibility for most health and welfare services. Indeed, that's a concept that the Legislature's analyst, Elizabeth Hill, advocated in 1993.

Hill's proposals haven't been popular in Sacramento. However, the need for the changes that she recommends won't go away so long as the state continues to make the kind of demands that drove L.A. County to the wall.