Confused about the state’s $20 billion budget gap? Want to find out what state cutbacks will do to local services? On Friday, March 12 at 10 a.m. in West Hollywood, State Sen. Fran Pavley has invited state Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, West Hollywood Councilmember John Duran and others to address her State Budget Town Hall. There’s no shortage of urgent topics commanding public attention in the current economic crisis and the Governor’s 2010-11 proposed budget.

See this map for directions to Fiesta Hall at West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard, or call Callie Hurd in Sen. Pavley’s office at 310-314-5214 for further details.

Posted 3/11/10

L.A. County officials Tuesday criticized ongoing plans in Sacramento to trim the state prisons’ population and costs by shifting the care of thousands of former inmates to the county.

Department of Mental Health Director Marvin J. Southard ticked off a series of costly and potentially disruptive effects on county mental health care during the Board of Supervisors weekly meeting. In the earliest stages of the shift, Southard said, the county could end up shouldering anywhere between $8 million to $24 million.

Southard described three groups of inmates and parolees for whom the county could assume responsibility for their mental health care. They are:

• An estimated 1,200 parolees, already residing in L.A. County, whose state-based mental health treatment is about to disappear, throwing them on the county services.
• An unknown number of mentally ill inmates still in state prison who may be released in upcoming months as the state struggles to meet court orders to cut overcrowding in the 168,000 inmate system. This group is particularly worrisome to county officials because it’s expected to be large and coming directly from prison with their needs unclear. For now, a court has stayed their release.
• State mental hospital patients confined because they were judged insane or unfit to stand trial. So far, in the last year, only a small number have been sent to county hospitals as part of a release program. Some of those individuals, Southard said, have been taken to county hospitals in “midnight drop-offs,” an unacceptable practice that he said has been rectified.

The 1,200 new patients will add about 3 percent to the county’s mental health outpatient caseload, Southard said in an interview following the supervisors’ meeting. “It’s an additional 1,200 people added to an already rising patient population when resources are declining,” Southard said.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who led the questioning of Southard, called it “bizarre” and “irresponsible” that the state would force the county to provide mental health care for these individuals in difficult economic times without providing funding.

The shift of the parolees to county services is the byproduct of a plan that went into effect in late January to reduce the state’s prison population. Reclassifying more than 7,000 individuals to “Non-Revocable Parole” allows the state to reduce parolee supervision and shift care from Parole Outpatient Clinics, funded by the state, to county facilities.

The plan brought strong reactions from county officials.

County CEO William T Fujioka, for one, said the additional burden on the county amounted to an “unfunded mandate”—an all-too-common practice of the state requiring programs for which it will not pay.

State officials argue that the parolees they will reclassify—as well as prisoners scheduled for release—are non-violent offenders who pose little risk to the community. Matthew Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations, has said that the state could save as much as $500 million a year by lowering probation costs and providing earlier releases for some inmates.

Complicating the financial issues is a federal court order requiring California to dramatically reduce the prison population. The order arises from a federal lawsuit showing that inadequacies of the prison health care system violated inmates’ constitutional rights in the over-crowded institutions.

State prison officials promise to assist the county with the paperwork and referrals. But Southard said after the meeting that, despite good intentions, getting help is tough when “the state is in a shambles” because of retirements, furloughs and cutbacks. “They’re trying their best, but just scheduling meetings with people at the state who know the situation is difficult.”

New County Counsel Andrea Sheridan Ordin told supervisors that “the lack of coordination I think is one of the most disturbing portions of this at the moment.” She promised to look at “all types of [legal] remedies” to increase coordination and communication with the state.

The county is seeking to take advantage of a massive U.S. Treasury Department program that has allocated $25 billion to help state and local governments across the nation get projects moving in areas that have been hit hard by job losses. Los Angeles County’s allocation is nearly $181 million in economic development bonds and $271.5 million facility bonds, which can be made available to private entities for projects in the recovery zone.

To support the case for a countywide recovery zone designation, county analysts pored over economic data and found that more than 83% of Los Angeles County census tracts have “directly experienced significant levels of poverty, unemployment, home foreclosures, or general distress,” according to a letter to supervisors from the Chief Executive Office.

Since the rest of the county falls within an average worker’s 31-minute commuting range, that means all areas of the county have a “reciprocal impact” on each other and should be included in the designation, the letter said. The countywide designation would also give supervisors more flexibility in coming up with a final list of projects to be funded with the bonds.

The only project specifically mentioned in the board letter is the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center. The CEO’s office said it has identified more than $1.1 billion in project proposals that meet the basic bond criteria—far more than the county’s bond allocation could cover. It currently is working with each supervisor’s office to develop a priority list of projects to be funded. The final list must be compiled by Aug. 15, 2010, and the bonds issued by Dec. 31, 2010.

The recovery zone economic development bonds come with a federal subsidy covering 45% of the interest. There is no federal subsidy with the facility bonds, which are tax-exempt and can be issued by the county and the funds loaned to private borrowers developing projects within the recovery zone.

The county also is authorized to issue $27,312,584 in Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds for energy-reducing or renewable energy projects in public governmental projects, with an additional $11,705,393 allocated to bonds for such projects in the private sector.

[Updated 1/26/10]: The supervisors, at their weekly meeting, approved the “recovery zone” designation. The CEO’s office will prepare quarterly briefings for the board on the project’s progress.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest budget proposal, which would deliver another round of deep cuts to social welfare and health programs, drew the ire of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. First District Supervisor Gloria Molina, for one, called the proposed cuts “terrifying.”

The supervisors pledged cooperation with the governor and Legislature on the 2010-11 state budget to ease the pain as much as possible. But they were clear in calling on Sacramento to begin making systematic fixes to the budget process to avoid shifting pain and problems to county residents.

“We now have a $20 billion deficit that is affecting every city, county and school in the state,” Fifth District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich noted during the board’s weekly meeting. He said the “rainy-day fund” that the supervisors created to help weather fiscal emergencies isn’t big enough to “withstand a tsunami that is coming from Sacramento.”

Third District Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky chided Schwarzenegger for shifting blame to California’s congressional delegation during the governor’s Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press.” “This is not Washington’s fault,” Yaroslavsky said. “The state got itself into its own mess.”

Calling the budget crisis “gargantuan,” Second District Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas blamed the two-thirds rule, the state’s constitutional requirement that all budget and tax measures must pass by a super-majority. “Unless that’s changed, I’m sorry to say, we will be here year after year in a similar predicament,” Ridley-Thomas said.

Fourth District Supervisor Don Knabe said that by slashing funds to mandated programs partially funded by federal matching funds, California would be throwing away federal money for services the county is required by law to provide. He called the situation “extremely frustrating,”

For Zev’s remarks, watch the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The savings “affects both residential and commercial property owners,” Auerbach points out.

The reduced tax comes thanks to an arcane formula built into Proposition 13, the property tax limitation measure voters approved in 1978. Under Prop.13, taxes can rise up to two percent in years when the federal Consumer Price Index jumps two percent or more. Unfortunately, it almost always does.

Not this year. Recently, the CPI actually dropped, and the “inflation factor” the state uses to help the assessor’s office determine real estate value flipped to become a “deflation factor.” So instead of seeing an expected jump next year of $55, the owners of that hypothetical $250,000 home will see an actual drop of $7 from what they paid this year. That makes a swing of $62. “It’s not just the decrease that helps,” says Auerbach, “it’s the lack of an increase.”

About 350,000 of L.A.’s 1.7 million homeowners won’t get the reduction. That’s because they already had their property tax bills reduced when the Assessor’s Office proactively recalculated the value of homes earlier this year in neighborhoods hard hit by the mortgage crisis.

Here’s the bad news: the small savings won’t show up until the fall of 2010. The 2009 bill that Los Angeles County residents received this fall showed the usual increase. This year’s calculation was made in 2008—before the economy had headed so far south.

And, while we’re talking that 2009 bill, if you haven’t paid already, don’t forget to send your first payment to the Treasurer Tax Collector to beat the December 10 final deadline.

After all, who wants to spend next year’s tax savings by forking over late penalties now?

But to Tiffany Gallindo, it’s huge. It means she can keep her job on the front lines of the Ryman Arts program, working to bring a free visual arts education and college guidance to gifted Los Angeles high school students, many of them low-income.

It means that Samuel Jang gets to continue his work as production manager for the Southwest Chamber Music Society, including helping to put together ambitious upcoming tours to Mexico and Vietnam.

And it means that Kenton J. Haleem of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum can bring back a position recently put on “hiatus”—a program manager in the organization’s media arts training program for at-risk kids.

All three organizations recently were singled out for grants of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The cash infusion comes thanks to the efforts of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, which together were able to preserve 21 positions in 16 arts organizations.

“The arts are a huge economic engine for our whole region,” says Laura Zucker, executive director of the County Arts Commission. “This is an important employer,” Zucker says, noting that the 300-plus arts organizations that are funded by the county employ more than 21,000 people.

And the importance of the organizations can be measured in more than just paychecks.

At Ryman Arts, a small nonprofit using donated studio space on the USC campus, they’re feeling the economic pains of students and recent alumni first-hand.

“Their calls and needs have been more urgent: Can we point them to more scholarship opportunities because they can’t take on more college loans? Can we arrange for them to stay after class to draw, because the electricity has been turned off at their apartment?” the organization said in its application for the grant. “Can we write another recommendation letter for a college application because they don’t have an art teacher at school?”

On the front lines is Gallindo, handling the phones, shepherding student applications, working to bring the aspiring artists and their work into the fold.

“I actually went to an arts high school,” says Gallindo, a dancer who attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and had been working at an insurance company before joining Ryman. “It changed my life and it opened doors. To be a part of something that is providing that opportunity to kids today is very rewarding.” (View recent student artwork on Ryman’s Flickr site).

Ryman artwork by Century City student

At the Southwest Chamber Music Society, there’s a similar mixture of excitement about upcoming projects—and concern about how to carry out an increasingly ambitious mission in an economic downturn.

On the plus side, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department is sponsoring Southwest as it travels later this year to represent the U.S. at the Guadalajara FIL Arts Festival. Even more complex is next year’s State Department-sponsored Ascending Dragon Music Festival and Cultural Exchange, which will include music festivals, educational programs and administrative workshops in the U.S. and Vietnam.

“This is what we’re calling a transformative year for Southwest Chamber Music,” says Executive Director Jan Karlin, “and we needed to bring in someone to manage it.”

Vietnam, from Southwest Chamber Music

But because Southwest is “seeing a substantial decrease in most of our funding sources,” the federal stimulus funds were needed to pay Jang’s salary, the organization said in its application. He will not only to help manage the upcoming tours but also holds considerable responsibilities for Southwest’s musical and educational outreach throughout Los Angeles County.

Jang, whose background is in financial systems analysis and who served on Southwest’s board as treasurer before joining its staff, says he is relishing the change in perspective that comes with his new position.

“Having come from the financial services world—one of the casualties of this recession—it’s a really eye-opening opportunity for me,” he says. Working with “staff, musicians and audiences puts a more human face on this organization. Just last week, I coordinated the start of our music educational program at Keppel and Pasadena high schools.”

Across town, the Hollywood Entertainment Museum has been trying to help a new generation write its own kind of history, as 75 high school students—many of them dropouts, on probation, or otherwise “at risk”—learn the ropes of entertainment industry trades. The museum’s educational arm, the Hollywood Media Arts Academy, which is a collaboration with L.A. County Office of Education and the Probation Department, combines core academics with elective classes, including animation, dance, film production and acting.

The federal grant “can’t come soon enough,” says Haleem, the organization’s director of education and development, who says the group’s program manager had been placed on “somewhat of a hiatus.” Now that there’s money to rehire, he says, “I’m hoping she’s still available.”

“Things are tough right now,” he says. “I think that is the story of the nonprofits right now.”

Students taking part in filmmaking course sponsored by the Hollywood Entertainment Museum

To view a full list of the county and city grants, click here.

In theory, it was a win-win.

Nine years ago, California voters overwhelmingly approved a measure to put low-level drug offenders on a path to rehabilitation while potentially saving taxpayers huge sums in jail costs.

Proposition 36 guaranteed non-violent drug and alcohol abusers the right to enter community-based treatment programs in lieu of incarceration. Since its passage, a yearly average of more than 50,000 individuals statewide has opted for the program, more than 25% of them in L.A. County.

Today, however, the alternative-sentencing program is imperiled, a victim of California’s budget mess. State legislators, faced with a gaping deficit this summer, eliminated the measure’s $120 million budget, forcing California’s hard-pressed counties to confront the consequences.

Although the state has appropriated $18 million in other treatment monies and has held out the possibility of giving counties millions more in federal stimulus funds next year, the impact on L.A. County has been swift and severe. In late September, the Board of Supervisors was forced to sign off on a stunning 80 percent reduction in Prop. 36 treatment services.

“The law will still be on the books. People will still be looking for treatment. But the treatment won’t be there for many of them,” says Nicholas Vrataric, executive director of the Clare Foundation, a Westside treatment center.

Some of the fallout so far:

• Nineteen Prop. 36 drug courts have been shut down because of the slashed state funding. The Probation Department, for its part, is no longer assigning officers to misdemeanor offenders, who represent about 30 percent of total participants in Prop. 36 programs, or to centers where violators are assessed for the kind of treatment they need.
• The waiting list for Prop. 36 treatment is swelling and expected to hit around 5,000 by year’s end, says John Viernes Jr., director of the county Public Health Department’s Alcohol and Drug Program Administration. Until recently, it was zero.
• Weekly drug tests for Prop. 36 defendants have been cut to once every two weeks.
• County health officials have begun urging providers to offer treatment alternatives that cost far less than the residential and out-patient plans currently being used. Many treatment centers, however, say they’re not yet skilled in providing these alternatives and question their effectiveness.

From its earliest years, studies have shown that Prop. 36 has saved substantial sums in prison costs, with about a third of participants completing treatment—roughly the same rate as for people outside the criminal justice system who’ve sought treatment, according to UCLA researcher Darren Urada, principal investigator for an annual statewide study of Prop. 36. In L.A County, the completion rate is even higher, about 46 percent.

Still, many government players in the criminal justice system have dismissed the program as little more than a get-out-of-jail-free card, an ideal that has fallen far short of its promise to reduce substance abuse and recidivism.

Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza, supervising judge of the criminal branch in Los Angeles, says that “at any given time, 57 percent of the felons eligible for Proposition 36 have a bench warrant outstanding,” indicating they aren’t reporting their progress to the court as required. “We consider it one of our least successful endeavors,” he says.

Scott Stickney, a Probation Department official, says that up to 70 percent of traditional, non-Prop. 36 defendants successfully complete treatment and probation, a much higher rate than for Prop. 36 participants. Stickney argues that the measure lacks the kinds of consequences, such as jail time, that many drug offenders need as motivation to complete treatment and probation.

The truth is that no matter what the funding levels or criticisms, Prop. 36 remains the law of the land, guaranteeing certain drug offenders a right to opt for substance abuse treatment rather than jail. And that has left the county’s public health and probation officials scrambling to stretch very scarce dollars.

Viernes, of the county’s alcohol and drug program, says one goal is to find ways to lower treatment costs, without sacrificing effectiveness, so that large numbers of Prop. 36 clients can still be accommodated. That may mean shortening residential treatments from 90 days to 60 days for some clients, he says, or sending them to cheaper outpatient programs or sober living homes, which would cost far less.

But the Clare Foundation’s Vrataric is one of many providers who worry that if treatment programs are cut too much, they might become ineffective. “I think the provider community has to push back,” he says. “In good conscience, that’s not good public policy.”

The county also is determined to try to line up other sources of funding for providers serving the Prop. 36 population.
And that’s welcomed news for providers such as Kathy Watt, director of the Van Ness Recovery House in Hollywood, which specializes in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender addicts. The 20-bed facility has seen its county grant money already cut from $51,000 to $9,736.

“By the end of the month, we’ll be done with the funding” she said in a mid-October interview.

To compensate for the funding drop, Watt says she and other staffers took a 20 percent pay cut and vows not to turn away clients seeking the center’s specialized treatment. “We’ll find funding somehow,” she says.

The $15.4 million Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, awarded at the end of September, will pay the set-up costs for a loan program to make solar panels, weatherizing and other clean-energy retrofits affordable to residents and businesses in unincorporated county areas. (Talks are underway for cities to opt in to the county’s plan soon, too.) Without the stimulus money, the county lacked the funds to set up the program, says Howard Choy, director of energy program at the county’s Information Services Department.

Once the program is up and running, the county will make low interest loans, funded by municipal bonds, to property owners, who will pay back the county over time through their property tax bills. That easy-payment mechanism will eliminate the upfront costs that are a major impediment for property owners who want to go green but lack the upfront funds for costly clean-energy retrofits.

Didn’t know about the federal stimulus grant? You can find news about all of the county’s federal stimulus grant applications at its Stimulus Funding website. Scroll down to the Status of County ARRA Grant Applications (or click here) and you’ll find a scorecard of every grant application the county has made under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Obama’s $787 billion federal stimulus plan better known as ARRA.

The county’s scorecard lists all of the 39 grants totaling $368 million that the county has won, including for programs to boost spending on food stamps and homelessness. The site also lists grant applications that are filed but still pending, along with those that were denied, such as one to retrofit 128 aging diesel county Public Works work vehicles with pollution-cutting devices.

Much of the money comes in “primary” grants made directly to the county or one of its agencies. Also listed are “secondary” grants made to the state of California and passed on to L.A. County in the form of road-repairing funds through Caltrans.

County officials have promised to make the reporting process transparent to the public as well as the federal government. The county beat the feds’ initial October 10 deadline to file reports on the county’s spending of grant money, a detailed accounting of funding and expenditures. (Some states and localities didn’t get in under the wire; the federal managers had to extend the reporting period for 10 days.)

Come next reporting period—in early 2010—the county’s chief executive office will list the federal grants L.A. County has received, using enhanced charts and graphics, according to Scott Wiles, special services assistant in the Operations section of the CEO’s office.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is warning homeowners to avoid solicitations from firms charging a hefty fee to “assist” area homeowners in filing property assessment reduction forms. The mailings come in plain, official-looking envelopes and offer to complete an evaluation of your property’s assessed value if only you’ll send them a “processing fee check or money order.” Many unwary homeowners pay the fee only to discover that the “review” is one that the county Assessor’s Office does every day for free.

If you are think you qualify for lower property taxes, you can download forms here, and visit the County’s Assessment Appeals page for full details on all aspects of property assessment, including proposed reductions. The County Assessor has already reviewed 473,000 residential properties to consider whether their assessed values should be reduced for 2009, and property owners were notified in June of the results. Property owners can also call toll-free (888) 807-2111 for assistance. “We definitely want people to know this is a free service,” says Assessor’s Special Assistant John Noguez.

One more bit of good news: In mid October, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 992, authored by Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), which tightens the rules against charging fees in advance for companies that actively advocate for homeowners at assessors’ offices or appeals boards.

Thanks to a proactive review by Los Angeles County Assessor Rick Auerbach of 473,000 homes and condominiums, property taxes were lowered on some 333,000 of them.

By visiting the County Assessor website, and entering a street address or Assessor Identification Number, owners can quickly learn whether they’re on the list, which primarily covers residences bought between July 1, 2003 and June 30, 2008, but also included homes in certain hard-hit pockets of the County going back as far as 2000.

The homes picked for proactive review came in neighborhoods where the run up and subsequent collapse in housing prices was particularly extreme. The average reduction in value for single family homes was $126,000, which means a property tax savings of around $1,400. For condos, the value drop was about $96,000 and the tax savings this year was approximately $1,100. The free review meant that these taxpayers would get the benefits of a reassessment.

Homeowners whose properties were reassessed should have received notification over the summer. Homeowners who think the new valuation is still not accurate should contact the nearest Assessor’s district office to discuss the results. If need be, they should consider filing an appeal with the Assessment Appeals Board by November 30, 2009.

Residential and commercial owners whose properties were not reassessed but who believe their property’s assessed value was too high should consider downloading and filing the one-page Decline in Value application. Or they can call the Public Service Information line at 213-974-3211, or toll-free, at 888-807-2111. When home prices dropped so quickly and comparables not always reliable, the Assessor urges property owners to contact them. “If property owners do have more up to date information, they need to contact us,” says John Noguez, special assistant to the Assessor. “Assessor Auerbach continues to be very proactive to help property owners.”