TRAUMA SYSTEM TRAUMATIZED ELECTION DAY SCARE TACTICS MIGHT NOT WORK ANY MORE.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

TWO years ago, Los Angeles County officials sold voters on a parcel tax by scaring the pants off them.

You might remember the TV commercials aired by the $1.5 million ``Measure B Saves Lives'' campaign. They featured stories of real people pulled from the jaws of death and given a second chance through the life-saving efforts of trauma care. But the campaign ominously noted, trauma units are themselves facing serious harm, or even death, because of money troubles. And what will happen when a drunk driver in a Hummer rolls over your Honda Civic and leaves you a squished mess that can only be repaired by the uniquely qualified staff in one of the county's 13 trauma care centers?

That horrible fate could be avoided for the low price of a $3-per-square-foot annual parcel tax. Practically peanuts.

As anyone who regularly sells fear to the American public (i.e., Dick Cheney) knows, the public eats that kind of stuff up. Of course, we want to be safe, and what's another 43 bucks a year, another half-percent sales tax, another fee tacked on the phone bill to save lives?

It worked like a charm. Measure B received 73 percent of the votes, and the county got an extra $168 million a year to save trauma care.

Except it's not saving the trauma units.

Just two years after those pleas to help keep the county's trauma network intact and saving lives, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors this week is preparing to shut one of the units down. The proposed closing of the trauma unit at Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center - arguably the most important unit in the county due the high number of shooting and stabbing victims it treats - would leave only 12 trauma centers, and only two at public hospitals, to serve the nearly 11 million people in the county.

So much for the promise that the tax revenue would save trauma care in Los Angeles County.

County officials say killing the unit is the only way to save the troubled hospital near Watts, which has suffered from years of mismanagement and now faces losing its accreditation and federal funds. Trauma units are extremely expensive to run, and the money could be spent elsewhere.

There's little doubt the King-Drew center is in critical condition. And perhaps closing the trauma unit will help keep the hospital alive until the next disclosure or an error that kills a patient. But that doesn't change the larger point, which is that voters didn't get what they were sold.

I don't often agree with Mayor James Hahn, but when he accused county supervisors of breaking the promises of Measure B with the closure of the trauma unit, I had to agree. The way the TV ads, the public appeals, even the language on the county proposal for the parcel tax put it, this tax was first and foremost about trauma, although there would also be funding for emergency rooms and bioterrorism response.

Rick Taylor, the political consultant who ran the Measure B campaign, told a reporter at The Oakland Tribune that it was the campaign's message that anyone, at anytime, could need trauma care that influenced voters the most.

But that doesn't square with what county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, one of Measure B's main backers, told a reporter last week. He said the county uses most of the money raised by the tax for emergency room care, not trauma care as voters were led to believe.

To add to the insult, on Tuesday - at the same meeting at which the Board of Supervisors discussed closing the trauma unit - county Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman disclosed another unfortunate Measure B expense. Freeman told the board that his department is spending about $22 million to finance a $12.5 million helicopter with Measure B funds. The department could have saved millions in Measure B funds by tapping other savings accounts where it's been squirreling money away, but wanted to keep that money in reserve to pay for other things.

I imagine the county could have better used that $9.5 million in unnecessary interest payments, rather than helping the bank get richer. That's not to say that that money could have been used for trauma care, but it does indicate a lack of foresight and coordination of money that voters generously turned over to the county.

It would be easy for those of us in other cities and communities to write this off as a South L.A. issue. Hey, the loss of a trauma care unit is their problem, not ours. But the closing of one of the few remaining trauma centers affects us all, pushing the burden for caring for the county's trauma patients on the remaining hospitals.

And when Angelenos go to the polls on Nov. 2, they ought to think very hard about the Measure B campaign when they consider Proposition 67 and Measure A. I know I will.

Proposition 67 would add a 3 percent surcharge on statewide telephone calls to pay for uncompensated emergency medical costs statewide, and Measure A would increase the state sales tax by half a cent to pay for more cops and police resources across Los Angeles County.

On the surface, that sounds great. More cops and better emergency care: Of course I support that. I'm all for paying my share of taxes to fund important programs. That's the cost of participating in a civilized society.

But in light of the promises and the realities of Measure B and the closing of the trauma unit at King-Drew, I'm wary about the promises of what we will get for this additional financial burden. I don't know about the rest of the county voters, but I'm tired of having fear and my good nature used against me.

On Nov. 2, I might just say no.

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Photo:

(color) A man with a cut arm stands in an emergency room waiting area at Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center in February.

Ric Francis/Associated Press