County Delays Cutting Mental Health Funding Amid Pleas for Services : Budget: Supervisors may slash $41.9 million in programs unless state aid comes. Patients and clinic personnel say more help, not less, is needed.

Patients, clinic administrators and advocates for the mentally ill on Tuesday predicted mayhem and tragedy if the County Board of Supervisors goes through with $41.9 million in cuts to mental health programs.

The supervisors are wrestling with major budget shortfalls for mental and public health programs because of the failure of the Proposition 134 liquor tax.

Action on the mental health cuts was postponed until next Tuesday to allow more time to obtain a promise of a bailout from governor-elect Pete Wilson. The supervisors also set Dec. 15 for a legally mandated hearing on the impact of the proposed $12.7 million in cuts to outpatient services at county hospitals and health centers.

Without additional money and with no cuts in services, the mental health budget will run out in April. The latest plan of county mental health Director Roberto Quiroz calls for dropping 22,000 of the 69,000 people in outpatient programs, closing 10 county clinics and converting the five that remain to crisis centers for the most seriously ill.

“Basically what we are saying is that we will no longer have walk-in outpatient clinics operated by the county,” Quiroz said.

One that would be closed is Hollywood Mental Health Service, serving 1,700 patients. The threat of its closure drove Ina Kleinberg, 61, of West Los Angeles to join a demonstration in front of the Hall of Administration on Tuesday just before the supervisors met.

About 100 protesters circled the plaza in front of the building at 500 W. Temple St., carrying placards with such slogans as “Mental Health or More Police” and “Share the Wealth With Mental Health.”

Kleinberg and her husband care for their 36-year-old daughter, who is schizophrenic and manic-depressive. -The family receives care from several sources, but Kleinberg said she also has needed help in coping with the stress that mental illness has brought on the family.

“I found a haven at Hollywood Mental Health in the once-a-week family group,” she said.

Later, in the supervisors’ meeting, Marvel Rolfe sat before the microphone to plead for Hollywood Mental Health. A psychiatric nurse there for 12 years, she spoke of tending to patients who are the most disabled among the county’s mentally ill, and of what she sees as the impact of today’s deteriorating economy, growing unemployment and money woes on mental health in general.

“We don’t need more cuts, we need more services,” Rolfe said, near tears.

Ann Lodwig Brand, president of the Assn. of Community Mental Health Agencies, representing 42 nonprofit mental health clinics under contract to the county, projected that 40,000--not 22,000--patients will be dropped from care if the cuts go through.

“They have got to come up with the money,” Brand said in an interview. “You have a system that has been in development for 50 to 60 years that will go under with these cuts, and you won’t be able to bring it back by adding more money next year.”

In postponing a decision on the cuts, the supervisors said they were counting heavily on Wilson to restore state mental and public health money that Gov. George Deukmejian cut last summer to balance the state budget.

The board mailed a letter Nov. 8 to Wilson asking for an emergency meeting to discuss restoring the cuts.

The board has received no response. Bill Livingston, Wilson’s press secretary, told The Times that he did not know if the letter has reached the transition team and that it was too early to make any budget decisions.

The supervisors plan to send a similar letter to county legislators to get them involved in lobbying Wilson.

Supervisor Ed Edelman, an advocate of additional funding, said he did not want the board to stop with Wilson, but to explore the possibility of new taxes or funds from other departments.

Times staff writers Richard Simon and Carl Ingram contributed to this story.