Posts about County Services
CPI calls on SD County board to optimize use of new federal health funding
By Susan Duerksen | November 30, 2011 |
Research shows more people uninsured in county, while outreach lags
As residents of San Diego County continue to lose health insurance, County officials could enhance their efforts to bring in federal funding newly available to increase coverage.
The Center on Policy Initiatives is calling on the County Board to re-examine its approach to the federal Affordable Care Act, in light of new research findings:
- Employment-based insurance is declining, leaving an additional 27,000 San Diego County residents uninsured in 2010, and pushing many thousands more into public, taxpayer-funded programs such as Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, CPI reports in The Uninsured in San Diego County.
- San Diego County spends relatively little on the uninsured, compared to other major California counties, and is lagging on outreach and enrollment in preparation for the new federal funding, CPI found in Improving Access to Health Coverage: San Diego County and Federal Health Reform.
“Counties are responsible for providing a healthcare safety net,” said Corinne Wilson, CPI research and policy lead. “The federal government is offering funding to strengthen those safety nets, and that gives the San Diego County Board an opportunity to benefit taxpayers as well as individuals who’ve fallen on hard times.”
As the Union-Tribune reported this week, the County has limited early enrollment in the new Low Income Health Program, instead transferring participants in from another program it opted to close. Because the closed program had broader eligibility standards, the change by the County will leave more people uninsured in the future.
Under the federal Affordable Care Act, which will be fully implemented by 2014, an estimated 203,000 more county residents could be eligible for Medi-Cal and others qualify for additional public programs. However, decisions on eligibility standards and allocating matching funds are left up to county governments.
CPI urges San Diego County officials to gather input from a wide variety of community stakeholders on the best way to respond to the federal healthcare reform opportunities, for the good of community residents as well as healthcare providers such as hospitals and clinics.
San Diego County: Saving for a rainy day during economic monsoon
By Susan Duerksen | April 26, 2011 |
CPI study finds unusually high unspent balance of $2.2 billion
Compared to the 11 other largest counties in California, San Diego County has amassed excessive reserves while scrimping on the safety net services it is obligated to provide. Read More
The Discipline to Plan for Our Future
By Donald Cohen | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | July 8, 2008 |
Imagine we in San Diego County had $2 billion to spend every year — that’s $5.5 million a day, including weekends and holidays — to help relieve traffic congestion, rebuild the urban infrastructure and lessen the impact of global warming. We could do a lot.
Or, imagine we leveraged that annual revenue to generate a massive $25 billion to invest up front in a new green and sustainable infrastructure for the 21st century. We could rebuild San Diego to get our homes closer to our jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and bring a higher quality of life to our neighborhoods. We could even expand on ideas used in other cities such as bicycle zones and universal broadband access to increase telecommuting. Read More
County Practices Diminish Services
By Mira Jang, Sundari Baru | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | August 10, 2001 |
With the advent of the New Economy and the flurry of downsizing by corporations, government agencies have joined in the effort to streamline by cutting permanent jobs and replacing them with temporary workers.
This restructuring has taken hold of our largest government agency — the county of San Diego. The Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego-based research and policy center, recently conducted a study of the county’s use of temporary workers. The findings in the report, “Temporary Government: The County of San Diego’s Growing Use of Temporary Workers,” were alarming.
The study, funded by the Rosenberg Foundation, found that the county employs over 17,000 workers, about 1,832 (as of January) of them non-permanent workers directly hired by the county. Most temporary workers receive no health or pension benefits. Temporary workers hired through temporary help agencies sometimes receive lower pay than their full-time counterparts.
The county charter allows for the use of temporary workers in positions that are “emergency, seasonal or temporary in nature.” Unfortunately, many of the positions being filled are not truly temporary in nature. They are clearly full-time, permanent jobs that have been turned into temp jobs so that the county could avoid paying benefits.
Our review of county records describes a clear management strategy that focuses on head count over the quality of service. County officials have explicitly converted full-time permanent positions into “permanent temporary” positions. In his performance plan, John A. Miller, director of the General Services Department, says the county will “use permanent staff for up to 80 percent of workload requirements and utilize temporary staff/consultants for the balance of workload needs.”
The county is intent on capping its permanent work force in favor of hiring more temporary workers, despite the demands of a rapidly growing population. The county is hiring so many temporary workers that it overspent its budget allocation for temps by at least $10 million in the three previous fiscal years. In the current fiscal year, it has exceeded the budget by $721,000 as of January.
If temps seek county-funded health care through emergency care or health clinics, the taxpayers end up paying anyway. For a county mandated to provide health care for the uninsured, it is sadly ironic that this same public agency fails to provide health insurance to its own workers.
Consider, for example, the experience of a former county temporary worker who was hired through a temporary help agency. Janette Mahnken, 41, worked as a receptionist, account clerk and intermediate clerk typist for three years at the Department of Information Services, making as little as the minimum wage and no benefits. She performed full-time work on a long-term basis, and she passed the Civil Service exam. Yet, even after three years, she was denied a permanent position. Without any health insurance Mahnken visited county-funded health clinics to treat various problems, including a kidney infection, costing her several thousands of dollars.
But this isn’t just a matter of providing equal access to health insurance to all workers. It’s also about the quality of services taxpayers receive. Take, for example, an incident at the county-run center for abused and neglected children.
Three years ago, when a 13-year-old ran away from the Polinsky Center, 43 of the 144 staff positions were vacant, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. An official admitted that temporary, lesser- paid, and sometimes inadequately trained workers were employed to handle the overload. These temporary workers are allegedly given only a 15-minute video and a handbook as training.
We are entrusting essential public services to be run by underpaid workers with no benefits and no job security. Is that the best we can do?
With an economic downturn looming and job insecurity on high alert, it’s especially crucial to think about how we want our government run. San Diego residents and workers deserve a more responsible, high-quality county government.
Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
