S.D. County Working to Cut Budget Further : Government: Proposed $30-million reduction will come from salaries, social service programs.

SAN DIEGO —  County officials grappled with yet another round of grim budget cuts Tuesday that could slash $30 million more from social service programs and the salaries of county employees.

David E. Janssen, the county’s administrative officer, recommended to the Board of Supervisors that $15.5 million more be cut from county programs, in addition to salary reductions of $14 million. He said an additional $900,000 should be cut from county-sponsored travel.

That comes on top of $26 million the county has already cut from its budget in the wake of the recession and the austere state budget passed earlier this month in Sacramento.

To help make up the shortfall, Janssen recommended that all county employees take 2 1/2 days off a year and that higher-paid workers “take the biggest hit” in salary reductions.

The proposed salary cutbacks were angrily denounced by a labor leader.

“You have other ways of balancing your budget,” Eliseo Medina, executive director of the San Diego County Service Council, told the supervisors.

“If the county succeeds in forcing pay cuts--and threatens to do that unilaterally--you’ll create a poison in your relations with county employees and leave a wound that may take years to heal. Our message to you is to work with us, not against us.”

Medina and other labor leaders accused the board of seeking to balance its $571-million budget “on the backs of county employees.”

“We’re tired of hearing, ‘We broke it. You’ve got to fix it,’ ” said Marian Hughes, a spokeswoman for clerical workers.

The board received Janssen’s recommendations quietly, with only Supervisor John MacDonald proposing his own cuts. Medina also offered a package of recommendations that spared workers’ salaries.

Janssen said he will “fine-tune” his recommendations even further, taking input from Medina, MacDonald and other supervisors, and present his final proposal to the board at its meeting Tuesday, when the budget for the current fiscal year will be adopted. This fiscal year ends June 30, 1993.

“We hope to mitigate layoffs to avoid additional service cuts,” Janssen wrote in his report to supervisors. “We also want to avoid contributing to an increase in the local unemployment rate. Salary cost reductions must be implemented as soon as possible. Delay will only lead to deeper reductions over a shorter time and increase the potential for layoffs.”

Janssen said such budget turmoil in San Diego County has not been seen “since the Depression.”

“We do not know when the economy will turn around,” he said somberly, adding that California’s unemployment figure of 9.8%--the highest in the nation--is expected to climb in 1993.

“Locally, we just don’t expect a turnaround for quite some time,” he said.

On July 15, supervisors made $26 million in cuts after a fiscal year in which the county had already dealt with a $66-million deficit. Then they waited for more bad news from Sacramento after Gov. Pete Wilson signed the new state budget early this month.

The latest figures from Sacramento mean the county will lose $17.9 million in property tax revenue, in addition to cuts in state funding for health and welfare programs.

Janssen said the extra $30 million in cuts he is proposing should bridge the rest of the $56-million budget shortfall.

Cuts in services proposed Tuesday include:

* A reduction of $625,822 in money allocated to the San Diego County district attorney.

* A $1-million reduction in money allocated to the Department of Health and Human Services. Janssen said the impact of such cuts would not be known until later.

* A reduction of $876,009 for the Probation Department.

* A reduction of $3 million for the Sheriff’s Department, $2 million for the Department of Social Services and $1,638,600 for Superior Court.

Cutbacks in trial court funding will not have to be as drastic as had been expected. Instead of the $10.4-million decrease Janssen had originally feared, the state will reduce the county’s funding by “only” $6 million.

Janssen said 50.65% of the cuts would come from criminal justice and 14.3% from health and social services.

Even with the severe cuts in criminal justice, Janssen said public protection remains a “high priority” and consumes about 70% of the budget for this fiscal year.

Janssen said the Sheriff’s Department remains his area of greatest concern and that he and the board would prefer not to delay the opening of the East Mesa Jail. He said he and various department heads will begin meeting today to ponder the final breakdown of cuts.

“You can live with anything. It’s just a matter of what you get used to,” Janssen said, “which is a real tragedy.”

Janssen said the medical benefits of current employees would not be cut but that employees hired in the future could not expect the same level of protection and support as those hired before this fiscal year.

Medina, the employees’ representative, said cuts in salaries could not be implemented unilaterally, or county officials would be “in violation of the law.”

“If they do it, I guess we’ll make lawyers rich,” he added. “Between the both of us, it will just be a bigger waste of money. What we’ve given them, in our recommendations, could save $14 million.

“But it’s political. They’re more interested in cutting wages than in working with employees and unions. And that’s a wrong thing to do.”