Sonoma County mental health division, beset with deficit, scales back extra-help staff

Facing a budget squeeze made even tighter by the October wildfires, Sonoma County’s mental health division is limiting its staffing levels in all but four of its 37 programs by cutting back on slots for temporary workers who often perform the duties of full-time employees.

Nearly 40 extra-help workers, including clinicians and therapists, are affected by the reduction, according to county health officials, who said they must cut back temporary staffing because of a projected $11 million to?$13 million deficit in the Behavioral Health division’s budget for the current fiscal year.

The anticipated budget gap comes largely from a change in the way the state provides certain funds for mental health services, and it existed even before the destructive fires placed an additional strain on county resources, according to Barbie Robinson, the county’s health services director.

Overall, the county has forecast a $21 million shortfall at the end of the current fiscal year because of projected tax revenue declines and cost increases associated with the fires.

“Sonoma County is not the only county faced with budgetary challenges related to behavioral health - this is an issue that is affecting counties across the state,” Robinson said. “The (firestorm) has compounded a budgetary challenge that existed prior to the disaster.”

The Behavioral Health division will continue to employ extra-help workers in its transportation, employment assistance and DUI programs, as well as the crisis stabilization unit, according to Robinson. All ?extra-help staff will remain on a list and can work in those four programs if they’re qualified, she said.

The operations change came as a surprise Friday to Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Shirlee Zane, a longtime advocate for mental health services. Zane was aware of the Behavioral Health budget strain but not the extra-help reduction, she said.

“I was never told we were going to cut back on extra help. That’s news to me,” Zane said. “It’s already so difficult to meet mental health needs. Now, we got a whole community in trauma and grieving. I would never approve of that.”

Zane said she was particularly troubled by the extra-help limitations in light of the board’s recent creation of a county office dedicated to wildfire recovery and resiliency for at least five years. The office will have seven staff members, including three current county employees and three new time-limited analysts.

“I don’t want to hire a bunch of analysts when what the community needs is mental health services,” Zane said.

Extra-help workers do not receive most of the benefits of full-time employees - they accrue no vacation time or pension, for example. Departments bring them in based on need and financial ability, and have the discretion to scale back as necessary, according to Christina Cramer, the county’s human resources director.

“They’re hired to augment operations in some way,” Cramer said. “It’s kind of like a substitute teacher, where they might need a sub for two weeks, three weeks at a time or a month full time.”

That means the reduction of opportunities for an extra-help worker is not a layoff.

Still, an extra-help staff member can regularly work 40-hour weeks when a permanent employee is on vacation or sick leave or when the county has a vacancy but needs to maintain certain staffing levels, officials said. The county typically uses an extra-help worker for a continuous period of no longer than one year, although provisions exist to extend in some circumstances, Cramer said.

And they can be union members, too: Of the 37 extra-help staff members affected by the Behavioral Health reduction, 21 are represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1021, the county’s largest organized labor group, according to the health department.

“Extra help is often used rather than employing full-time people,” said Joel Evans-Fudem, president of SEIU Local 1021’s Sonoma County chapter. “What I’ve been trying to work on with the county is to try to find a pathway for extra-help workers to be converted into full time. They often say on hiring extra-help workers that this can lead to a full-time position, and right now there’s actually no mechanism for that to happen.”

Evans-Fudem said he worried that, after limiting extra-help workers in the Behavioral Health division, the county might further move to eliminate numerous vacant jobs and contract some programs to third-?party operators.

County health officials are still working on a fiscal assessment of the Behavioral Health division and assessing any further changes that may be necessary due to the financial constraints.

“We recognize the fact that this is a challenging time, and we have taken as many steps as possible to try to gain some efficiencies,” Robinson said. “It’s always the last option to reduce staffing - that’s the last thing we look at. We’re really trying to work to right-size the budget moving forward.”

You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@thejdmorris.