Voters Will Decide How to Dole Out Tobacco Fund

Orange County voters will have their say in November on whether to spend 80% of the county’s windfall tobacco settlement funds on health care and anti-smoking programs.

Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever on Wednesday certified the ballot initiative submitted by health care advocates and AARP, an advocacy group for senior citizens. The certification effectively launches the campaign for passage.

The health care group, which has renamed itself Taxpayers for Reduced Healthcare Costs, filed 115,000 signatures on May 17, a day after a majority of the county Board of Supervisors rejected a compromise plan to spend 60% on health care and the rest on other programs.

“We did a random check of the petitions, and far more than the required [71,206] signatures were filed,” Lever said.

Orange County is expected to receive $765 million over 25 years, its share of the state’s $21.3-billion from the settlement reached between the nation’s major tobacco companies and the states’ attorneys general. The county already has begun using this year’s allotment by spending $38 million on debt reduction.

The initiative, meanwhile, mandates spending 19% for services to seniors and the disabled, including transportation, long-term care and in-home support; 23% for indigent care by emergency and on-call physicians; 12% for tobacco prevention, anti-addiction and mental health programs; 20% for community, mobile and hospital clinics; 6% for uncompensated emergency and trauma care at hospitals; and 20% to law enforcement.

County officials and three supervisors favor spending most of the money on debt reduction and jail expansion.

So far, no organized opposition to the ballot measure has surfaced, but the Orange County Deputy Sheriffs Assn. and former Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle have been widely mentioned as potential leaders of such a movement.

Pringle said Wednesday that he has had discussions with a number of people about opposing the initiative, which he called “ a terrible way to do county budgeting.”

“I believe there will be an organized opposition to the initiative because it is bad public policy,” Pringle said.

Deputy Sheriff Assn. President Wayne Quint said his group had “not yet” decided whether to oppose the measure.

Supporters of the measure include doctors and hospital groups as well as the Coalition of Orange County Community Clinics, state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Garden Grove) and former county supervisor and state senator Marian Bergeson.

It also has been endorsed by Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, the American Heart Assn., the Orange County Central Labor Council, Planned Parenthood, Latino Health Access, the Arthritis Council, developer C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, the League of Women Voters, Reps. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and Assembly members Patricia C. Bates (R-Laguna Niguel), Ken Maddux (R-Garden Grove), Bill Campbell (R-Orange), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) and Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach), who is Assembly minority leader.

The health coalition last month asked 15 public relations and political consulting firms to submit proposals for running the pro-initiative campaign. They have received responses from about a dozen firms from Orange County to Sacramento proposing campaign budgets from $230,000 to $2.4 million, said Michele Revelle, spokeswoman for the group.

They include statewide political consulting firms such as Nelson Communications, which has an office in Orange County but rarely becomes involved in local issues; Sacramento-based Cavalier & Associates, which ran the successful Proposition 22 campaign to ban state-recognized same-sex marriages; and Waters & Faubel, the Newport Beach public affairs firm that ran the winning Measure F campaign to slow county plans for an international airport.

The health coalition has not decided on a campaign budgets or how much it needs to raise, Revelle said.

Campaign finance disclosure forms show the group raised $328,500 through March 31 and has about $235,000 on hand after paying for part of the petition gathering campaign.

Among the largest donors were: Tenet Healthcare hospital group, $71,500; the California Medical Assn., $50,000; Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, $24,500; St. Joseph Hospital, $17,750; Children’s Hospital of Orange County, $15,500; and a total of nearly $95,000 from local and statewide emergency physician groups.