A proposed health-industry-sponsored initiative on how the county should divvy up $27 million annually in tobacco-settlement funds may face a court challenge before it gets on the ballot in November.
The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote this week on whether to place the initiative on the ballot. Since supporters have collected the required number of signatures, such a vote is usually a formality.
However, County Counsel Lawrence “Lon” Watson has written an opinion saying that the initiative is unconstitutional because it “binds” future Boards of Supervisors on the expenditure of general funds. Watson urged the Board of Supervisors to challenge the initiative in court. It’s unusual for a court to prevent an initiative from appearing on the ballot, but there are some precedents, wrote Watson.
Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, one of the lead backers of this initiative and a lawyer who was himself involved in one of the tobacco suits that led to the national settlement, disagreed with Watson’s analysis.
“Their threat of a constitutional challenge is the height of frivolousness,” said Dunn. “We’ve had some of the best legal minds go over this initiative to make sure it’s constitutional.”
Dunn said the county officials might be using Watson’s opinion as leverage in negotiations with the county’s healthcare providers. Those talks were intended to head off the initiative, but stalled. After the initiative’s backers submitted enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot, the two sides expressed a willingness to restart the negotiations.
Two supervisors, Cynthia Coad and Charles Smith, have indicated that they might want to take the initiative to court, while another two supervisors, Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson, want to put the initiative on the ballot. The swing vote could be Jim Silva, who opposes the initiative but has indicated he doesn’t want to oppose placing it on the ballot.
The initiative is backed by a who’s who of the health industry in Orange County, including Tenet Heathcare Corp., St. Joseph Health System and Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian. This coalition wants 80% of the tobacco settlement funds, about $22 million annually, to go to programs such as paying for emergency room visits by uninsured patients. The supervisors have voted to use most of the money to reduce the billion dollars in debt created by the county’s bankruptcy in 1994 and to build new jail facilities. n
