Measure H for Health

County voters will be asked in November to decide between two opposing ballot measures that will determine how Orange County will spend the estimated $30 million in tobacco lawsuit settlement funds that will be received over the next 25 years. They are measures that never should be on the ballot. But of these, G and H, we favor Measure H.

The decision could have, and should have, been made by the Board of Supervisors, but the board majority wanted to spend the tobacco windfall on reducing the county’s bankruptcy debt and jail needs rather than health care. So after 18 months of negotiations, the health care community was forced to go to the people. It garnered more than 115,000 signatures to put Measure H on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Public Frustration

First, some thoughts on what all this says about the state of governance in Orange County today. The 1994 bankruptcy plunged public confidence in county government to rock bottom. A recovery plan, some good fortune in the economy, and streamlining of government decision-making positioned the county for a long journey back. But that process has been hampered by a new post-bankruptcy pattern of arrogance that has taken root in a thin majority of supervisors, Board Chairman Chuck Smith and colleagues Jim Silva and Cynthia P. Coad.

None of the problems that county government may have had in recent decades quite compares with the current state of affairs. Orange County has settled into a disturbing but predictable pattern on the disposition of major public policy questions. On the El Toro airport proposal, and now on tobacco funds, the public debate on vital issues is taking place after the fact, and at the ballot box.

Increasingly, citizens and groups with legitimate places at the policy table feel shut out of the decision-making process. They are presented with decisions that may make little sense to them but that are presented as ordained. The public in turn is left with no choice but to seek remedy by resorting to the ballot initiative.

This supervisorial majority is so out of touch with its constituents that a separate avenue of governance in effect has sprung from the frustration of local interest groups. We saw this in the campaign for Measure F early this year, after the majority of three made it clear that it was going to approve a major international airport for El Toro no matter what. It is evident now that the county’s health-care community has decided that it had no choice in dealing with intransigent supervisors but to go the initiative route.

Instead of having a public discussion in which supervisors gather information and then make important decisions by factoring in the expertise and needs of local groups, the decisions are made first, and then the public discussion begins. And it begins in the forum of last resort--the initiative process.

This clash of ballot initiatives, H versus G, is instructive in that initiators of both measures are acting out of frustration with the board’s inability to conduct an important public conversation about priorities. So for the second time this year, questions that define what kind of county this will be are being decided on election day, because the board majority is unresponsive.

The People vs. Three Supervisors

On the tobacco settlement question, supervisors went to court in an unsuccessful attempt to remove the people’s initiative from the ballot, claiming it was unconstitutional. But a judge wisely refused to take the vote away from residents. The supervisors then took the same ballot approach themselves by putting on the November ballot the competing Measure G, offered by John M.W. Moorlach, the county treasurer-tax collector.

The major difference between the measures is the allocation for health care. Under Measure H, 80% of the money would go for a variety of programs including health care and services for seniors, emergency room and trauma-center care, nonprofit community clinics, and tobacco-use prevention and control and other addiction programs. The other 20% would go to the Sheriff’s Department for public safety programs and services.

Measure G would give 40% of the money each year to retire the bankruptcy debt, 18% to public safety and only 42% to health-care services. Moorlach, an accountant who understandably is most interested in the debt reduction, sees Measure G as a fair alternative for voters.

He argues that it will retire the debt sooner, saving interest and freeing money from then on for health care. He likens the approach to a family paying off its home mortgage sooner. That’s true, but for the eight years or so saved after 2018, families and children in need of medical services they can’t afford would lose the help they need today for about 18 years. That’s like a family throwing money into prepaying the mortgage and not paying the health insurance premium.

It should be said that Moorlach at least has presented a much more moderate alternative than the take-it-or-leave-it supervisors did. He brings some credibility to the discussion too, when history has shown the supervisors far too indifferent to health-care considerations. The county board has a history of shortchanging health-care needs. It still, as in other years, allocates fewer general fund dollars for health care per capita than any other major county in the state.

The Case for Health Care

That’s why the tobacco funds are even more needed here in Orange County. The intent of the tobacco lawsuit settlement was to secure money to repay taxpayers for money they spent treating smoking-related illnesses and to keep teenagers from taking up smoking. Measure H seeks to do that and deserves strong support from county voters.

Allocating the tobacco money to reduce the county debt, which is already covered by a financial repayment plan, would not violate any legal prohibition, but it would certainly be thumbing its nose at the spirit of the settlement.

Measure H has well-deserved strong community support from not only a coalition of health-care professionals and nonprofit service groups but many others such as the Orange County Business Council, AARP, numerous other individuals and organizations and a who’s who of public officials on the local, state and federal level, including two members of the five-member county Board of Supervisors.

The initiative with the highest vote total over 50% will win. If neither measure gets that 50%, the decision will go back to the county board where health-care shortfalls that affect all residents, not just the indigent, will suffer.

Voters mustn’t let that happen. All kinds of markers are used to showcase the county’s strong economic health. But the real mark of a community is how well it cares for its neediest residents. A mark next to Yes for Measure H on Nov. 7 will measure that commitment.

In addition to resolving to spend the funds for health, the county must begin finding ways to lift the blanket of frustration that has been thrown by arrogant supervisors over decision-making on the big county policy questions. Why couldn’t the discussion that the medical community forced, which later was joined voluntarily by Moorlach, have taken place much earlier at the instigation of supervisors?

It is shocking that this county has come to a state of affairs where the only town meeting place for knowledgeable and interested parties on countywide matters of importance is in the voting booth. The public conversation should come first, not after the fact. It ought to take place long before citizens see no alternative but to seek a remedy at the ballot box.