Supervisors OK No-Raise Budget

Despite an unprecedented demonstration of angry solidarity by unionized workers and a literal screaming match among its five elected members, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to approve a $12.6-billion budget that includes no raises for county employees.

Some of the union members have gone without cost-of-living increases for as long as five years.

“The county has turned a corner toward financial stability,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky. “I think we have to continue our disciplined approach to fiscal management--and today’s vote is a big step in that direction.”

The budget includes cuts in the mammoth Health Services Department, mostly through “efficiencies” that are part of a federally mandated restructuring of the health system that de-emphasizes hospital-based care in favor of outpatient treatment. The budget, which is 5% larger than last year’s, also contains tens of millions of dollars in funds to help overwhelmed caseworkers in the Children’s and Family Services and the Mental Health departments.

The board’s sole--but vehement--dissenter was Supervisor Gloria Molina. “The budget itself is not a bad budget,” she said after the vote. “But I think that it is failing in not putting in place a mechanism by which to develop a fund by which to have some . . . money on the table for cost-of-living increases” for union members.

It was that controversy over whether to include money in the budget for more than 80,000 union members that erupted into an hourlong volley of name calling, accusations and personal attacks between Molina and her colleagues.

The unions, which are currently negotiating their contracts, say they have forgone raises for too long, while the county teetered on the edge of insolvency. After thousands of union members marched on the Hall of Administration to convey that message, Molina introduced a motion asking her board colleagues to “commit to restore” the cost-of-living raises for the county’s work force.

“I think it would be foolish to say nothing and to do nothing” for employees, Molina said. “We cannot as managers ignore this issue any further. Our employees have gone without a raise for far longer than city and state employees.”

Some of her colleagues immediately said the board should go into a closed-door executive session to discuss Molina’s proposal, since it involved labor negotiations that are supposed to be done in private--away from union leaders who were sitting in the audience. But Molina refused, and persisted in asking county officials why such talks needed to be held in private.

Pointing to Yaroslavsky, Molina said: “As for Commander Zero over here, I am not willing to be bullied by him.”

Several supervisors, especially conservative Mike Antonovich, angrily accused Molina of holding up the budget negotiations just days before the start of the fiscal year by trying to improperly intervene in ongoing labor negotiations. “The political grandstanding is politically irresponsible and reckless,” Antonovich said.

Molina denied any wrongdoing, challenging Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen to discuss the ongoing labor negotiations so she could determine whether employees would be adequately protected once the budget is passed. Before Janssen could answer, however, he was ordered not to by Yaroslavsky, who as board chairman controls the meetings.

“I have never, ever, ever been in a public meeting where an elected official has proposed discussing such an issue in public, especially that the board should commit to a pay increase,” Yaroslavsky said. “It is absolutely ridiculous for us to be having this discussion in public, and I refuse to do it.”

Molina persisted, however, and suggested that all county departments review their budgets and come up with savings through deferment of some purchases, capital improvement projects and other means to provide workers with a pay hike--even a small, symbolic one until more money can be found later in the year.

When her colleagues refused to discuss the matter in public, she angrily accused them of “wimping out.”

After tempers calmed, discussions resumed and the budget was passed--with the caveat that the supervisors will return to their deliberations later in the summer after the state and federal governments ultimately decide how much money they’re going to give the county, and after labor negotiations with the unions are complete.

But the day’s debates exacerbated rifts among some of the supervisors that have grown wider during the last few months of informal budget talks.

“It was typical Gloria Molina tactics--government by tantrum,” Antonovich said. “She violated the procedure agreed upon by the board, that all negotiations [with employee labor unions] be handled by the CAO and labor negotiators.”

If anything, Antonovich said, if the state and federal government come through with additional funding in the coming months, he’ll fight not for a union pay hike but for more money for law enforcement, specifically to pay for more sheriff’s deputies, probation officers and prosecutors in the district attorney’s office.

“The county does not have the ability to create money. We cannot print money,” said Antonovich, who said he’d support a raise for union workers only when the state of California restores hundreds of millions of dollars of property tax revenues it took from the county in the early 1990s.

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Because the spending blueprint is now in place, the county can continue to run smoothly through the start of the fiscal year, and continue to negotiate with the various county labor unions, some of whose contracts have been expired for more than a year.

Earlier in the day, the supervisors witnessed an unprecedented demonstration of solidarity by thousands of unionized county workers.

The demonstrators began the day early, walking from Pershing Square to the county headquarters. Some blew into whistles, others beat drums and still others waved signs that read, “Show Me The Money!!!” and “No Raise, No Contract, No Public Safety.”

At one point in the raucous demonstration, the protesters marched through several floors of the Hall of Administration, drawing applauding workers out of their cubbyhole offices.

One marcher was Phyllis Tubbs, 65. The white-haired children’s services worker said she was protesting because she has had to dip into her savings just to make ends meet. “I’d love to get some money so I can have a living wage,” Tubbs said.

Then the marchers flowed into the Hall of Administration auditorium, and the supervisors stopped their weekly meeting so they could hear from several union leaders.

“Look around the room,” Annelle Grajeda, general manager of the county’s largest employee union, Service Employees International Local 660, told the supervisors as hundreds of workers assembled in the county headquarters’ auditorium rose to their feet and more than 2,500 others linked by television monitors clamored outside.

“What you see today is an unprecedented showing of solidarity and unity of purpose,” Grajeda said. “And that purpose is to hear you say you are committed to providing a raise for county employees this year. . . . After five years of sacrificing, in 1997 county workers are drawing the line!”

David Sickler, special assistant to the nationwide union group the AFL-CIO, told the supervisors the organization’s members around the country are committed to working on behalf of the county union members.

“The issue is at a crisis stage,” Sickler said. “We are prepared to turn out to support county workers.”

The union showing was considered unusual in that it included the rank and file and leadership of many county unions that traditionally protest for pay raises on their own, according to Grajeda and others.

In response, several supervisors told union leaders that they understood the workers’ plight, but that the county’s still precarious financial condition makes it all but impossible to guarantee a raise.

But Molina said she would fight for a raise for workers, saying they form the backbone of the county work force, from sheriff’s deputies to health inspectors and nurses, from social workers to probation officers and janitors. “I know the budget is tight . . . but we need to find those funds,” Molina said to raucous cheers from sign-carrying union protesters. Hours later, Molina introduced her motion.

In all, the budget calls for about 1,200 full-time employee reductions.

The newly adopted budget also calls for hiring as many as 2,000 new employees in other departments--mostly paid for by specially earmarked state and federal funds--that would provide for more jail beds, more detailed investigations of child abuse cases and more participants in a much-praised welfare-to-work program.

And it leaves many other departments without increases after years of cutbacks.