After a bitter battle, California's 2007-08 budget was approved more than seven weeks late - not surprising with the state's arduous two/thirds super majority requirement (lawmakers in 47 other states only need a simple majority to approve their budgets).

Sadly, it was also not exactly front-page news that this year's $145.5 billion budget was passed largely on the backs of the poor.

On August 24, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used 51 line-item vetoes to cut $702 million from services and programs. More than $526 million of that came from social services earmarked for struggling low-income Californians, including the homeless, elderly on fixed incomes as well as the blind and disabled.

"One obviously has to realize that there are certain financial restraints on the state of California," pointed out Msgr. Gregory Cox, executive director of Catholic Charities of Los Angeles. "It's important that there's fiscal responsibility in how money is to be allocated and how it is to be spent.

"But why do the cuts always have to go to these programs that serve the disenfranchised and vulnerable? Why can't they be more proportionally measured throughout the budget as opposed to focusing typically on programs for the poorest of the poor?"

Sister of Social Service Gail Young, program director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese's Office of Justice and Peace, had one word for the state's budget cuts: "Terrible." She said they would only create more social problems in the future by eliminating or reducing help for children and adults who desperately needed help.

"The poor weren't favored at all in this year's budget, but they're offering tax breaks to yacht owners and well-off business interests," she mused. "We're going to have to work extra hard during the next legislative session. We have to because the cuts are a list of reductions that directly impact the poor and the most vulnerable of society. We have to be a strong voice for these disenfranchised people."

But Nancy Berlin, director of the California Partnership, a network of nonprofits and community organizations, believes the final budget could have been even worse. She recalls that at the beginning of the year Governor Schwarzenegger had proposed cutting more than 150,000 children off of CalWORKs, the state's revised welfare program. The California Partnership and other grass-roots organizations fought hard - and successfully - to stop that drastic cutback.

"But low-income people did not do well in this year's budget," Berlin observed. "The majority of the cuts to make the budget work were cuts to health and human service programs for low-income people. And we were really disappointed in the governor making so many line-item vetoes, because that totally circumvents the legislative process."

'Unconscionable'
One of the biggest hits in the 2007-08 budget was the elimination of the $55 million "Integrated Services for Homeless Adults With Serious Mental Illness" program. Created in 1999, it provided funds for supportive housing, job training, substance abuse counseling, mental and healthcare plus even providing grocery-buying skills to hardcore homeless men and women.

Mental health professionals have pointed out the positive therapeutic benefits of just have a stable place to live, especially when once-homeless mentally ill individuals are also offered comprehensive services. Local results seem to bare this out. From November 1999, 13,000 people have been served by the innovative program, which currently enrolls 4,500 clients.

As of the beginning of this year, participants have had 81 percent fewer days in jail, 65 percent fewer days of psychiatric hospitalization and 76 fewer days of homelessness compared to before they entered the program. With nearly 90,000 homeless people, Los Angeles County receives almost a third of the program's funds to serve 1,700 men and women.

The state legislator who created the homeless mental health program, Senator Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, called the cut "unconscionable." He told the Los Angeles Times, "A 45-million-dollar tax break for yacht owners stays in the budget, and a nationally recognized, incredibly effective program to end homelessness for those living with mental illness gets thrown under the bus."

The director of St. Vincent's Cardinal Manning Center, an L.A. skid row short- and long-term shelter serving men, women and children, readily agrees about the desperate need for mental health services for the homeless. Joan Sotiros estimates that "easily half" of the folks who show up at 231 Winston Street are suffering from severe mental illness.

"I can tell you that there are sick enough people on the streets today that the whole idea of adding to that number is just outrageous," she said. "Is this really how we treat people in this country? Do the people who voted against this [homeless mental health] program not have family members who are in this situation where they need long-term psychiatric care?

"As an agency that works with the homeless, financially we will not be impacted because currently we don't receive any of those funds. But program-wise, we'll probably be seeing more homeless on the streets. Meanwhile, they're trying to move the people off the streets. Somehow this doesn't fit."

"Years ago, people who couldn't function would have been in protective custody in a state mental hospital," the seasoned social worker pointed out. "But today there are very few resources for them, although mental health services are a great need. We have people here who are just totally, absolutely mentally ill who need to be hospitalized if there was a different system."

Adjustments denied, delayed
Another social service program that was basically eliminated in the new budget was the "Children's Outreach Initiative," which had its state funds slashed from $20 million to nothing. The outreach program encouraged eligible parents and guardians to enroll their kids in Medi-Cal and Healthy Family health care coverage.

"That's a terrible cut," said Berlin of the California Partnership. "I know a lot of the clinics are very upset about that. Because they were hoping it was a way to get more children into regular medical care - to get their regular checkups and immunizations.

She noted that "it doesn't really seem to go with what the governor is saying about wanting to do something with health care reform."

A couple of COLAs (cost-of-living-adjustments) also came out bloodied-and-bruised in the budget battle. As expected, for a third straight year there was no increase for mostly single mothers with children in their CalWORKs grants. These monthly payments will remain at $723, with a food stamp allotment of $330.

And for the poor elderly, blind and disabled getting SSI (Supplemental Security Income) and SSP (State Supplementary Payment) grants, there will be a five-month delay in the state inflation adjustment from January 1 to June 1. Starting the adjustment later for 1.2 million Californians will save the state $124 million.

"These cuts are subjecting the poorest and most vulnerable Californians to unnecessary hardships," Steve Pehanich, executive director of Catholic Charities of California, told The Tidings. "How we as a society treat our most vulnerable citizens is really a fair judge of how we're doing as a society.

"These COLAs have not been given for three years now, and you're talking about the difference between buying food or paying the rent for a lot of people. These are people who are disabled and blind and poor. I mean, you don't want to be balancing the budget on the backs of these folks. But that's what we're doing."

Another social service program to suffer, which advocates lobbied hard to expand, was money for more naturalization services in California. Although a $2 million boost to the program was in the legislature's approved budget, Governor Schwarzenegger blue-penciled the increase, scaling back the allotment to $3 million - the same amount that was in last year's budget.

"We've got almost three million permanent residents of the United States who are trying to get their citizenship papers completed just in California," reported Pehanich. "And these are all legal permanent residents, people who have done it through proper channels. But they can't get the assistance they need: help with their citizenship application, citizenship testing, English classes and preparing for the interview.

"A lot of people come to us or other nonprofit groups like Jewish Family Services because they know and they trust us. So this was a good way of helping all of Californians, all residents. It doesn't make any sense to just cut back on it."

Msgr. Cox, who heads Los Angeles' Catholic Charities, concurs. "These are programs that are working in the system to help keep naturalization affordable for those who are very poor or for the working poor," he said. "So that cut by the governor was a sad thing that's definitely going to impact us."

Dysfunctional legislature
The executive director of the California Catholic Conference said the state's bishops were "deeply disappointed" that the governor, who is a Catholic, accepted all the proposed cuts of his Republican colleagues in Sacramento. Ned Dolejsi went on to say that many of the cuts fall disproportionately on those individuals and families working the hardest to make ends meet.

"It is not right to delay expenditures for those who are poor, while legislators of both parties offered a package of more tax breaks to well-off interests," he declared. "We chose to fund tax incentives for movie producers and others, while totally eliminating successful outreach efforts to sign children up for low-cost health care and totally eliminating additional funding for services to the mentally ill homeless.

"These types of decisions should embarrass most responsible and compassionate Californians," he added. "After eight months in session and 54 days of delaying, this budget is a tribute to political expediency and legislative dysfunction."