Ending speculation since the March election, county officials who strongly opposed Measure A say they’ll enforce the initiative’s mandate to spend the local share of tobacco settlement money on health care.

The proposed budget to be presented to the Board of Supervisors on May 21 distributes this year’s roughly $2.5 million installment of the settlement as required by the ballot measure, county Assistant Administrator Gail Wilcox confirmed. Measure A garnered more than 62 percent approval in the March 5 election. “We’re going to comply with the will of the voters,” Supervisor Katcho Achadjian said Wednesday. Officials have given few details on why they changed their stance. They were expected to discuss how to deal with the measure in closed session, where they are allowed to exclude the public from talk about potential litigation. The possibility of suing to block the measure from taking effect was raised by the County Counsel’s Office before the election. But Achadjian said that after the election a consensus formed among board members and county administrators that the measure should be enforced, despite their prior opposition. The money at issue comes from a settlement by major tobacco companies with 40 states, including California, that ended lawsuits over consumer protection, anti-trust laws and government costs of treating smoking-related illnesses. Achadjian and Wilcox noted that the lion’s share of the settlement money had already been going to health-care programs, so that part of the county budget wouldn’t change anyway. “So far, we have spent every penny for health,” Achadjian added. “I wouldn’t want the money going to anything else.” Proponents of the measure, Citizens for a Healthier San Luis Obispo County, argued the money should be required to stay in health care and that some of it should be used to offset losses that hospitals and physicians incur when caring for indigent patients. But supervisors called the measure a money grab by private doctors and hospitals who are slated to get 29 percent of the settlement funds. “It’s good news,” said Dr. Rene Bravo, a San Luis Obispo pediatrician and part of the group of doctors who backed the measure. “Truly the tenor of our discussion with leadership was to work together and make this thing work,” he added. That’s a stark change from before the election. County Counsel James Lindholm’s ballot analysis of the initiative stated, “The measure is invalid and will be the subject of litigation if passed.” In February 2001, an Orange County Superior Court judge struck down a county challenge against a similar measure approved by 64.6 percent of voters there in November 2000. The rhetoric against Measure A “just ceased after the election. That was a good sign,” said Linda Somers Smith, a San Luis Obispo attorney who represented initiative proponents in litigation over how the measure was described on voters’ ballots. Supervisor Mike Ryan said that after closed-session discussions, the board directed administrators to find a way to make the measure work. “If we can tweak it enough and make it work, then why go to litigation?” Ryan said. Wilcox said the biggest budget change from the initiative is the cut in preventive health grants to nonprofit groups. Measure A requires that no more than 15 percent of settlement funds go to that program. So that pool will be reduced to $375,000 from last year’s $1 million, Wilcox said. But it’s still unclear how the county will disburse an estimated $725,000 to emergency-room doctors and hospitals to cover bad debts. “There’s a lot of questions that we still have to sit down and work out,” Bravo said. Achadjian said he’d like to see that money pay for health care for the indigent who can’t pay private hospitals and doctors. But he expects hearings may be needed to decide which doctors and hospitals are eligible for that money, and for how much of it. “They didn’t put down anything (in the measure) on exactly how that will work,” Ryan said. “So there’s a lot of things that are yet to come.” “We will implement Measure A. That’s a given,” said Supervisor Peg Pinard. “But what and how it affects everything we don’t know.”

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