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HOME > ABOUT > PRESS > PROVIDERS SHOCKED BY GOVERNOR'S LINE-ITEM VETOES
Article published - July 29, 2009
Credit: PRESS DEMOCRAT
Providers shocked by governor's line-item vetoes
By ROBERT DIGITALE & BLEYS ROSE
Officials heading Sonoma County’s social service agencies, health centers and government human services programs said Wednesday that the governor’s vetoes will have a devastating impact on their programs.
“I am speechless,” said Jo Weber, county director of the Human Services Department. “If they come to pass, these cuts will negatively impact our most vulnerable citizens such as children facing abusive situations, and elderly and disabled individuals with nowhere else to turn for their care.”
Local officials said they were shocked as more details emerged Wednesday of the nature of social service programs that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered trimmed, cuts that came on top of those already approved by the state Legislature.
Sonoma County’s poor, its AIDS patients and victims of domestic violence will suffer as cuts trickle down to reduce the flow of state money to their programs. County government officials said cuts will reduce the county’s ability to provide child welfare programs such as abuse investigations and foster family care as well as in-home support services for blind and elderly residents.
Sonoma County will be forced to cut $350,000 from programs that provides case management for disabled people living independently, that fund Alzheimer’s day care and that provide bags of groceries for the low income elderly.
“I feel like somebody has died,” said Diane Kaljian, the county director of Adult and Aging Services. “These programs are so close to our heart.”
West County Health Center will see its $6 million budget decline by at least $770,000. Of that amount, nearly $600,000 in cuts were added Tuesday by the governor.
The Alexander Valley Regional Medical Center in Cloverdale estimates a total loss of about $300,000 to its $2 million budget. “It’s going to jeopardize our ability to provide medical services to the uninsured and low-income in our community,” said Jenine Saunders, Alexander Valley’s chief financial officer.
In Santa Rosa, the YWCA’s domestic violence shelter expects to lose about $200,000, nearly half its budget.
YWCA Executive Director Denise Frey called it a dark day for her agency, “but a darker day for the victims of domestic violence and their children.”
On Tuesday, Schwarzenegger made about $500 million in added cuts before signing the budget.
Democratic legislators castigated the governor for further cutting services to the needy, and they vowed to fight to restore the items that were removed under Schwarzenegger’s veto authority. But the governor said additional cuts were needed because the lawmakers had failed to fully close the state’s $26 billion deficit.
Some health centers and domestic violence shelters are expected to close around the state, local agency leaders said, though none have announced such a likelihood in Sonoma County.
“We’re going to probably have to lower our services, decrease our services, but we will not shut our doors,” Frey said of the YWCA shelter, a program in existence for three decades.
Saunders of Alexander Valley said that clinic at some point may need to turn away uninsured clients. It can do so, she said, because it does not have the requirements of a federally recognized health center to treat all who come seeking care.
Mary Szecsey, executive director for West County Health, said her agency may need to reduce dental services at its Guerneville clinic and may lay off some staff at its facilities, including Sebastopol and Occidental.
The agency this spring received about $98,000 in federal stimulus money, Szecsey said, but that amount falls far short in making up for the state cuts.
“It really destabilizes the safety net,” she said.
Sonoma County’s child welfare services stand to lose about $1.2 million in funding that pays for investigations of abuse and neglect and reunification of foster children with their families. Weber said monthly payments to foster families and group home operators will be reduced by 10 percent.
“I am very concerned about our ability to respond quickly to our community’s call to prevent further abuse,” Weber said.
County officials estimated that about 35 percent of the caseload of 5,039 individuals who receive in-home case will be affected when the state reduces the amount of money paid to caregivers. As many as 870 blind, disabled and elderly people will lose in-home support altogether and another 871 individuals in similar situations will see a reduction in funding for the hours that caregivers work.
Among the other cuts, the governor eliminated $52 million for AIDS education, counseling and patient services. In a press release, Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, criticized that cut and many others made by the governor.
Kathie Powell, chief executive at Petaluma Health Center, said the cuts to her agency amounts to much less than those affecting the rural health centers.
Powell noted that those centers often are their community’s sole providers of medical care. As such, they play a key role in treating residents, including those suffering this fall and winter from swine flu.
If the sick can’t turn to those centers, she said, “who’s there to take care of them?”
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