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Tax Hikes Ruled Out for Trauma Care

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 August 2005, 15:01 CDT

Aug. 3--Los Angeles County's Board of Supervisors rejected raising property taxes Tuesday to help fund new trauma care centers in the Antelope and San Gabriel valleys but ordered health officials to set aside a $20 million surplus to pay for the service this year.

Emergency Medical Services Director Carol Meyer had asked the supervisors to increase the assessment a quarter of a cent -- to 3.25 cents per square foot -- to raise revenues to open trauma centers and for other urgent health care needs.

The increase would have cost the owner of a 1,500-square-foot home an extra $3.75 a year.

The supervisors said they will reconsider the proposal next year.

"I can't explain to my neighbor, or frankly my wife, why we are raising the tax when we have a $20 million surplus in the account," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. "As far as trauma centers in the San Gabriel and Antelope valleys, that is what this reserve is all about in the first place.

"If hospitals are willing to come into the system, that's what funds are being held in reserve to match whatever Pomona Valley Hospital or the Antelope Valley Hospital are able to pony up with. We should hold that reserve there if somebody comes forward in these valleys who is trauma-challenged."

Voters approved Measure B in 2002 to help keep hospital emergency rooms and trauma centers open. The measure allows for annual medical inflation adjustments.

But as a result of a large jump in the assessed values of homes in the last few years, annual revenues generated by the measure have grown from $170 million shortly after it passed to nearly $200 million now.

"We are already benefiting from increased property taxes in many different ways," Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said. "I'm not prepared to ask property owners to pay more money."

The supervisors also rebuffed a request for funds from the Downey Regional Medical Center, which has been overwhelmed with patients since the closure of the trauma center at Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center south of Watts.

"If we approved this, every single private hospital in the county would line up immediately because they are all in the same situation as you," board Chairman Gloria Molina said.

Yaroslavsky said the state and federal governments have been cutting health care funding to the county in recent years.

"If we make a decision as a board that we are going to be backfillers of state funding, then we can kiss the county health system goodbye," Yaroslavsky said.

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Source: Daily News - Los Angeles, California

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