Spurred by fears of job losses, county government's largest labor union is surveying Behavioral Health Department employees to gauge what some say is plummeting worker morale in the wake of financial scandals and a management shake-up.
Union officials recently distributed questionnaires to 450 Behavioral Health employees--partly in response to workers' concerns about potential harassment and retaliation by a new mental-health administration, union deputy director Ellyn Dembowski said Monday.
But employees also fear that administrators are drawing up layoff plans in anticipation of the loss of millions in annual mental-health funding, including $5.4 million the county agency receives each year from the state Department of Mental Health.
Union officials played down those concerns, however, saying they have been assured by Mental Health Director David Gudeman that no layoff proposal is in the works. Gudeman and his boss, Health Care Agency Director Pierre Durand, are working hard to bring about changes that they hope will stave off a catastrophic loss in funding, Dembowski said.
The union, Service Employees International Union Local 998, expects to collect about 100 completed surveys this week and will tabulate responses in coming weeks, Dembowksi said. The survey asks about fear of job losses, whether concerns are "based on facts or fueled by rumors" and what can be done to improve relations in the department.
"We want to know if that fear is pervasive in all employee groups or if it is just a small group of people," Dembowski said.
Half a dozen investigations by state and federal regulators into problems in the Behavioral Health Department were spurred by the Board of Supervisors' decision last year to merge the county's mental-health and social services agencies.
The board rescinded the decision after federal regulators said it violated Medicare billing guidelines. But the county is still dealing with the fallout from other problems uncovered by the merger.
Supervisors agreed this summer to repay $15.3 million in improperly billed Medicare claims alleged in a federal lawsuit by the Department of Justice. And since July, 34 of the county's mental-health and medical clinics have received reduced Medicare funding as a result of another probe.
*
Health Care Agency administrators have refused repeated requests by The Times to detail how much revenue the county will lose each year. But some officials estimate the amount at $2 million.
