Aid Demand Grows While County Cash Flow Drops : Economy: A report says the social services workload increased as much as 20%, but building permit fees and court fines dwindled.

Recession-stricken Ventura County residents are aggravating the county’s budget troubles by giving the government less money but demanding more of its services, according to the county’s top administrator.

County cash flows from building permit fees and court fines dwindled in the first half of the 1991-1992 fiscal year, said Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg in a report to be presented today to the Board of Supervisors.

At the same time, the government’s workload of social programs has increased by as much as 20%, said Wittenberg’s midyear budget report.

The report--Wittenberg’s second midyear budget update since the fiscal year began in July--follows the supervisors’ decision in December to spend $1.7 million on hiring 76 new temporary caseworkers for the county welfare offices.

“We’re called on to do more work with less money,” Wittenberg said Monday. “The bottom line is there’s less revenue and more casework in the social areas.”

His report said the number of Ventura County residents receiving food stamps has increased by 23% from September, 1990, to January, 1992, the middle of this fiscal year.

Medi-Cal assistance cases went up 22.5% in that time, and the number of families receiving state assistance through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program has increased by 8.5% in Ventura County, the report says.

Although only 53% of the 1991-1992 fiscal year has elapsed, psychiatric cases have eaten up more than 60% of the patient care days that the county Mental Health Department expects to provide, the report says.

“Any time there’s a recession, we tend to get a few more clients,” said Dr. Duane Essex, deputy director of the county Department of Mental Health. “Anything that disturbs the household fundamentally, economically or personally, that affects (the caseload).”

But he said the caseload also has grown since the department began using a new mobile psychiatric clinic and increasing its number of contacts with mentally ill people living on the street.

The county public health department did more work in the first half of the 1991-1992 fiscal year than it had planned to do: with 53% of the year elapsed, county nursing clinics have handled nearly 66% of the patient visits they anticipated for the entire year, the report says.

The caseload also has increased at the Ventura County Medical Center’s emergency room in Ventura, Wittenberg said.

“As more and more people are out of work and on welfare, as they come to our medical center without medical insurance, it puts a tremendous strain on us,” Wittenberg said. “All our welfare programs have grown from 15% to 20% in the past two years. The revenue, essentially it’s static.”

One of the biggest sources, the Corrections Services Agency, is expecting a budget shortfall of nearly $500,000, said its director, F. William Forden.

Some convicted drunk drivers and misdemeanor offenders are choosing to go to jail rather than pay the $17-a-day fine they would face if they chose to serve their sentences in the work-furlough and work-release programs. The result is that the programs generate less revenue.

“Getting $17 a day on average from 200 people instead of 250 people, that can add up very quickly,” Forden said. “The economy certainly is having its impact.”

The county is earning less from building permits, said Bert Bigler, the county budget director, due to the slowdown in the construction industry.

The county expected to sell $1.36 million worth of building permits by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, Bigler said. The estimate has been lowered to only $939,000, he said.

“There’s sort of a double-edged sword,” Bigler said. “There’s the revenue side . . . and the workload. With more unemployment, more people are looking for health care, welfare and public services provided by the counties. On the one hand the revenue’s going down and on the other hand, the costs . . . go up.”

Wittenberg’s report follows an unprecedented number of budget cuts by the Board of Supervisors since January, 1991. Most departments were hit with cuts totaling 10%.

Now, he said, the supervisors are waiting for Gov. Pete Wilson to tackle a projected $6-billion deficit in May by making cuts to the state budget that eventually would reduce state dollars that flow to county governments.