Santa Barbara County’s Social Services and Behavioral Wellness departments will likely take the brunt of county budget slashes for the 2017-2018 fiscal year, according to deliberations from the Board of Supervisors at last week’s budget workshops.
Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, who represents the 5th District, told the Sun he expects the county will decide at its budget hearings in June to eliminate about 200 positions from Social Services. The proposed cuts elicited emotional reactions from supervisors at the end of their April 21 budget workshop, the last of three workshops where supervisors deliberated potential reductions for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1.
Supervisor Das Williams, who represents the 1st District, even took the subject back to the Bible, quoting Isaiah on the importance of caring for orphans and the oppressed—to which 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam responded that it’s better to teach a man to fish than to hand out fish.
“There has to be someone at the end of the line who says you just can’t afford it anymore, and he happens to be down at that end,” Lavagnino said at the workshop, gesturing to Adam and drawing laughter from the supervisors. “We are running out of money.”
But Supervisor Janet Wolf, who represents the 2nd District, said she wished the board could have explored the idea of putting more money into Social Services, given that 33 percent of adults and 62 percent of children in the county use a program provided by the department.
“It would have been great to have more support for Social Services,” Wolf said at the workshop. “I’m not hearing that from some of my colleagues, and that’s sad. I’m not disappointed. I’m sad.”
She added that impairing one department could have a larger effect on county government as a whole.
“You pull one thread, and sometimes a whole piece of fabric will dissolve. I really believe that,” Wolf said of county departments. “They all work together, and I think some of the proposed reductions would significantly impact that safety net.”
The supervisors did agree on allocating money to add more beds to Behavioral Wellness’ mental health facilities and to the District Attorney’s Office for continued work on the Operation Matador case, which they concurred was vital to public safety. Still, the cuts have to come from somewhere—the county estimates an overall $35.4 million budget gap for the next fiscal year, largely due to a projected decrease in the rate of return on employee pensions.
The pension problem arose in October 2016, when projected pension costs for county employees spiked unexpectedly due to the county Board of Retirement’s approval of a decrease in the assumed pension rate of return from 7.5 percent to 7 percent. The lowered rate of return is predicted to increase the expected general fund deficit for the county to $15.9 million, up from the $13.6 million estimated in December 2016.
“I think we’re in the first year of a five-year rebalancing of what county government’s going to be to people, because the pension shortfall blew such a hole in our budget,” Lavagnino told the Sun. “It’s going to be five years of bad news, because of the money we have to pump into the shortfall.”
But at least for the upcoming fiscal year, the major cuts shouldn’t expand much beyond Social Services and Behavioral Wellness, he said.
“I don’t think we’ll see much of anything come out of public safety this year,” Lavagnino said. “It’s a possibility, but it’s just so hard to make those cuts, because nobody wants to be the guy to take an officer off the street.”
By the end of five years, “all the fat’s going to be gone,” and the county budget will reach “bare bones” unless additional funding comes in from an outside source, Lavagnino said.
Still, the governor won’t release the official state budget until May, at which point local governments will have a better idea of how state money will be allocated.
“I think we’ll find out a lot more about our social service problem and some of those issues once that happens,” Lavagnino said. “So the numbers will probably change between now and June.”
Either way, board priorities will have to change, as Adam stated bluntly at the April 21 budget workshop.
“Continuing board prior commitments is just not possible,” he said. “It’s unrealistic. There’s going to be things that were previously board priorities that we’d love to do, but it’s just not going to be possible.”
The final budget hearings will take place on June 12, 14, and 16 at 9 a.m. in the County Administration building in Santa Barbara.
Staff Writer Brenna Swanston can be reached at [email protected].
