Clinic’s funding is restored

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to overturn a controversial, unanimous decision that it made last month to suspend funding for Planned Parenthood, but created new guidelines for future funding that clinics consider onerous.

Supervisor John Moorlach was the driving force behind the suspension. He said he did not support giving money to organizations that perform abortions, even though Planned Parenthood officials said the county funds only educational outreach programs designed to teach kids about physiology, sexually transmitted diseases and birth control methods.

The funding was reinstated on a 3-2 vote — Moorlach and Supervisor Bill Campbell still opposed it.

Planned Parenthood gets roughly $290,000 a year from tobacco settlement revenue under Measure H along with 17 other community clinics that receive money.

Supervisor Pat Bates was one of the three who initially voted to suspend the funding March 10 then voted to rescind the suspension. At the March meeting Bates raised concerns that singling out Planned Parenthood without looking into the offerings of all clinics funded by Measure H funds could be looked at as an abuse of discretion.

She told the county’s legal counsel and the Orange County Health Care Agency to look into the decision. The Health Care Agency came back with a recommendation to reinstate the funding and to add a couple of regulations governing the criteria for future grant decisions.

All five supervisors voted in favor of the revised guidelines that will favor direct health care services instead of health education.

Health education programs only comprise about 10% of the $7 million in tobacco settlement revenue that the county gives out annually, according to Health Care Agency staff.

Several other clinics funded with the same money offer similar programs to Planned Parenthood, Bates said, and it would not be fair to pick and choose which get money and which don’t.

“We either need to [suspend funding] for all of them or none of them if they’re providing the same services,” Bates said.

The Orange County chapter of Planned Parenthood was happy about the decision to reinstate funding, but called the extra provisions to regulate future grant applications “burdensome” and said that it would “severely impact the scope of services that [clinics] can provide.”

One of the provisions of the new requirements prevents tobacco settlement revenue from funding clinics that offer abortions, which Planned Parenthood performs at many of its clinics.

“They’ve pretty much made it impossible for us to get any other kind of funding,” said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Stephanie Kight.

Planned Parenthood plans to apply for funding to provide breast health care for uninsured women when its present contract expires June 30. The organization believes that the breast health program falls within the new guidelines passed by the supervisors.

Moorlach said that his staff’s legal analysis concluded that the suspension of funding was not illegal.

“I felt that the decision on March 10 was legally defensible,” Moorlach said.

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.