Our Vision Statement: Disability Rights California will create individual and family supports, chosen and directed by the person with a disability

Business Journal

April 16, 2010

County budget problems hitting mental health services hard

by Kathy Robertson

Sacramento County is between a rock and three hard places when it comes to working its way out of a massive budget hole.

County coffers are dry.

The state owes the county money but can’t pay. A five-year collective bargaining agreement that contains rising labor costs runs through next year. And a ballot measure approved by voters in better days requires the county to cancel outside contracts in order to protect county jobs.

The dilemma is playing out in spades in behavioral health services, which is facing a $17.5 million budget gap and massive reorganization of the way mental health services are provided to 6,500 people.

The county faced a $31.5 million hole in behavioral health services this fiscal year, but filled it mostly with program cuts. A mid-year adjustment eliminated the equivalent of 16 full-time jobs out of 553 to get $3.6 million more.

The proposed budget for fiscal 2010-11 would cut the equivalent of almost 59 full-time jobs and revamp what’s left of the safety net for psychiatric patients.

Details keep changing; at press time, county officials were scheduled to air the most recent plan Thursday night.

More than 200 mental health clients and their supporters turned up at a public hearing on the initial plan April 1 to express concerns about proposed changes and to question why they were happening.

“Testimony has fueled fear,” county mental health director Mary Ann Bennett said. “People are frightened that we are changing the way things are done, but there is another take on this. No one will be cut off, and we are expanding some programs.”

Bennett declined to give further details before Thursday but said the $17.5 million hole must be filled.

The state owes the department $21 million but is facing a $20 billion deficit of its own.

Increases in the last year of a collective bargaining agreement between organized labor and the county are projected to hike labor costs by $5.4 million. And a 1996 ballot measure commonly referred to as “71-J” allows the county to contract out services as long as county employees aren’t affected negatively.

That’s about to change.

The county has contracted mental health services to nonprofits for years and didn’t feel the 71-J restrictions in good times, Bennett said.

“We’ve never had the situation rise to this level,” Bennett said. “I don’t think the people voting for this ever thought the county would be in this position.”

Others chafe at the interpretation.

“I’m one to believe the voters, when they passed it, thought once contracts were awarded and carried out successfully, they would not be terminated to keep civil service workers employed,” said John Buck, executive director of *Turning Point Community Programs*, a nonprofit that contracts with the county to provide mental health services. “Services should be contracted out when financially feasible and it can be proved to be at the same or less cost for the same quality.”

The county must negotiate concessions from public employee unions at a time when everybody has to share the pain of budget deficits, too, Buck said.

Nancy Matulich, business agent for the *American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 146*, was headed to a meeting with county officials Wednesday afternoon. It was her third. The bargaining unit represents most of the county’s mental health work force, now down to about 500.

“We’ve been meeting, but we haven’t agreed to anything yet,” Matulich said. The big question for the union, Matulich said, is if workers agree to defer all or part of their pay raise, where will the money go?

“Mental health workers care what happens to people; that’s their job,” she said. “My job is to protect the employees ... without sticking it to the county. We’re past figuring out who is at fault. We’re all on a sinking ship.”