The struggle session over healthcare cuts at the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday was followed by an equally spirited discussion of cuts to the ranks of the Social Services department. Its employees make up 20 percent of the county’s workforce, but the department finds it will be $4.6 million short of its projected budget amount this year.
The agency is a critical one that provides eligibility and case worker support for family welfare, foster children, adoption placements, child safety, protective services, medical coverage, food assistance, and many other essential services.
Director Dan Nielson explained how revenues had decreased within the complicated structure of federal and state funding that underwrites some but not all of his department. His suggestion to make up the department’s deficit was to lay off 121 positions. Among those were 56 that were already vacant, leaving 65 employees who would lose their jobs.
Rather than lay anyone off, said Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, they should close the 56 vacant positions to start with and return in November to see where that left the department financially. “What is more important than Social Services?” he asked. “This is what we do. This is why we are up here. We have an interest in providing a social safety net for folks.”
Lavagnino commented that among the speakers for the healthcare session, which included Social Services employees, no one talked about losing their job. “They did not talk about themselves,” Lavagnino remarked. “The first thought they had was, ‘If I’m not there, somebody’s not going to get their CalFresh on time.’ Or ‘somebody’s welfare case won’t get worked quick enough.’”
The county has a number of pots on boil, one of them being the county jail expansion at a cost of $165 million and an annual loan payment of $12 million for 20 years, Lavagnino said. He began to suggest the county’s reserve of $47 million could go to backfill Social Services, when Supervisor Joan Hartmann interrupted to remind him that the county needed its big reserve for the credit rating on the loan.
The county’s pot of general fund monies, which is available to a number of departments, is another potential source. That and other options will be up for discussion next month and also during the budget talks and workshops next year.
