County Votes to Restrict General Relief Aid

Saying they have nowhere else to turn for money, the county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to take able-bodied General Relief recipients off the welfare rolls after four months each year.

They also voted to deny those with drug and alcohol problems any aid unless they are in treatment programs.

But in a lengthy closed-door executive session, the supervisors also agreed to consider restoring some of the estimated $40 million in annual savings, if legal advocates for the poor promise to let the county off the hook for tens of millions of dollars in retroactive welfare payments, which an appellate court has ruled it owes to General Relief recipients.

That judgment, handed down in March, requires the supervisors to pay as much as $160 million in General Relief benefits, which the judges said they had “illegally� taken from welfare recipients in the early 1990s. The county expects to have to pay about $136 million to those recipients who can be located.

General Relief payments of $212 a month, which now may continue indefinitely, go to the poorest of all welfare recipients who are ineligible for other forms of aid, such as food stamps and Aid to Families With Dependent Children. Unlike other welfare programs, which are paid for with state or federal money, General Relief comes directly out of the county’s coffers.

At their weekly board meeting, the supervisors told a small but impassioned group of welfare recipients that they must cut welfare payments to satisfy the court judgment, but that they also would provide about $12 million next year in job training benefits for those cut from the rolls.

“We are faced with a judgment of well over $100 million,� said Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky. “That money doesn’t grow on trees. . . . We don’t have it.�

Seeking to avert time limits on aid, lawyers who successfully sued the county proposed a compromise that the supervisors discussed in private. It would have set an $80-million cap on the county’s retroactive liability in exchange for restoration of at least several months worth of annual eligibility for General Relief recipients.

The supervisors rejected that proposal, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, then voted in public to proceed with the cuts. The vote was 4-0, with Supervisor Don Knabe absent.

But the supervisors also directed county lawyers to continue negotiating with attorneys representing welfare recipients in the hopes that a compromise can be reached before they vote to make the ordinance final in two weeks.

Although he refused to discuss the ongoing negotiations, Yaroslavsky agreed that they amount to a “zero sum game� for the poor.

“It is a sad situation, but that is the situation we’re in,� said Yaroslavsky. “I believe to the extent we focus on the future and not on the past [recipients], I think we can minimize the dislocation of people on General Relief.�

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Lawyers for the poor angrily rejected that argument, saying the county’s new approach to limiting General Relief goes far beyond repaying their liability in the court case.

Cutting the General Relief benefits “was illegal to begin with, and to now use it as justification [for further cuts] is disingenuous,� said Paul Freese, directing attorney of the Public Counsel group’s homeless assistance project.

By negotiating, Freese added, “we are just trying to minimize harm to the poor.�

Welfare recipients told the supervisors that the cutbacks would force many of them onto the streets, into lives of crime just to survive, and into county hospitals and jails at an unprecedented pace.

“This is retaliatory, vindictive, very harsh and inhumane,� said homeless organizer John Madrid. “These are real people. . . . They won’t survive.�

Avery Delton, 43, said he is one of the thousands of recipients who are owed $73 a month each in back welfare payments for a period of about two years. “I was here when you took our money to balance the budget,� he told the board. “We didn’t create the budget problems. But every time there is a budget crisis, we get cut again.�

According to several sources familiar with the talks, the supervisors have insisted that any compromise measure include the drug or alcohol treatment requirement.

One former addict, Gilbert Saldate of Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles, said such a policy would scare many addicts away from General Relief, while forcing others to undergo treatment before they are ready.

Several of the supervisors disagreed. “This is an effort to break the cycle of drug and alcohol dependence,� Supervisor Mike Antonovich said. “It makes social and economic sense.�