For consumer crusaders, it’s personal

Chances are you’ve never heard of Rigoberto Reyes—unless you’ve been ripping off the public.

Reyes heads Los Angeles County’s consumer affairs department, which for three decades has been chasing scammers of all sizes and stripes—from shady car dealers, to unscrupulous real estate operators, to fake attorneys and fly-by-night wedding photographers. Each year, the widely praised department receives hundreds of thousands of calls from consumers seeking help.

But now Reyes and his department find themselves not only advocating for the public, but also making a behind-the-scenes pitch for themselves.

This week, the county’s chief executive officer, William T Fujioka, recommended that the Department of Consumer Affairs be folded into a bigger agency to reduce redundancies and increase efficiencies as part of a multi-faceted effort to eliminate a $220 million deficit in the county’s next fiscal year budget.

Fujioka has estimated that merging consumer affairs with the Department of Community and Senior Services would save $346,000 in salaries and benefits by cutting four administrative positions, on top of a $164,000 cut that would take effect even without the proposed consolidation.

Reyes says that while he appreciates the CEO’s budget strategies, his department can achieve the same savings on its own and should remain independent—“a sort of beacon for consumers with problems.”

“I’m sensitive to the needs of the CEO,” says Reyes, who, as the department’s acting director, reports to Fujioka. “It’s not us versus them. But there are different ways to get to the same place. We’ve proven over the past 30 years that we know how to protect consumers. Why change it?”

That view has found a receptive audience with the Board of Supervisors. On Tuesday, acting on a motion by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the board instructed the CEO to defer the consolidation and come up with other ways for consumer affairs to save the same amount. The board set a deadline of June, when it’s scheduled to consider the budget.

The motion, which calls consumer affairs a “high performing department,” notes that the jobs targeted for elimination are “unique” to the agency and may not be replicable by employees in the Department of Community and Senior Services. What’s more, according to the motion, a consolidation may risk the ability of consumer affairs to receive settlement funds and other external money.

Reyes says he knows exactly where the department’s lifeline can be found: in a trust account holding $5 million that the department received in 2006—the leftover proceeds of a consumer lawsuit settlement in San Diego. That payment flowed here at the recommendation of the state attorney general’s office, even though consumer affairs wasn’t involved in the case.

“We were saving the money for a rainy day,” Reyes says. “Today’s the storm.”

The money can be used only for “new or enhanced programs,” Reyes says, explaining that additional responsibilities would be given to employees whose jobs had been classified as redundant and targeted for elimination under the merger plan.

And that, he says, shouldn’t be hard, given the expanding ambitions and soaring workload of the 46-person department. For example, before the economic meltdown in 2007, Reyes says the department received 44 complaints about fraudulent foreclosures. Last year, that number soared to 545.

“When the economy slows, the need for our services goes through the roof. That’s when the scammers head out,” says Reyes, who joined the agency as a student worker in 1995.

Reyes says that at least twice before during tough financial times, plans had been drafted to merge consumer affairs with other departments—once after Proposition 13 in 1978, and again in the 1990s. But both times the Board of Supervisors determined “it didn’t make sense for consumers.”

“There are very few local departments of consumer affairs at the local level and they’re admired for what they do,” Reyes says. “They do incredible work that wouldn’t otherwise be done.”

Posted 4/21/11