That expectation did not last long.

Only months into his term, Davis publicly bristled at legislative leaders who were pursuing priorities different from his own. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board, Davis said lawmakers’ role was to carry out the agenda he had campaigned on, arguing that he alone had won a statewide mandate.

The remarks landed hard in Sacramento. Davis was already at odds with Senate President Pro Tem John Burton and Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who wanted to focus on health insurance while the governor put education proposals at the center of his agenda. The conflict grew so bitter that Burton and Villaraigosa effectively cut off communication between Davis’ aides and legislative staff.

The episode became an early example of a recurring force in California politics: Even when the governor and legislative leaders belong to the same party, the rivalry between the executive branch and the Legislature often shapes — and sometimes stalls — the state’s agenda.

That dynamic is surfacing again as Gov. Gavin Newsom enters the final stretch of his governorship and looks toward what is widely expected to be a presidential campaign.

This time, the conflict centers on the state budget and the size of California’s ongoing deficit. Newsom is seeking to close a series of multibillion-dollar shortfalls that followed years in which state spending outpaced revenue. His revised budget proposal totals $349.4 billion, and he has described it as balanced not only for the coming fiscal year but also for the first budget cycle after he leaves office.

To get there, Newsom’s plan restrains spending in areas that are central to Democratic lawmakers’ priorities, including education, health care and social services. Those programs are closely watched across Southern California and the Inland Empire, where large numbers of residents rely on state-funded services such as Medi-Cal, California’s health insurance program for low-income residents.

Since Newsom released his revised budget in May, lawmakers have faced pressure from advocates who oppose reductions to safety-net programs. Organizations representing health care providers, schools and social service programs have warned that cuts or delays could affect vulnerable Californians and local agencies that already operate under tight budgets.

Legislative leaders responded last week with their own budget plan, released ahead of Monday’s constitutional deadline for passing a spending blueprint. Their proposal would restore many of the reductions Newsom recommended or postpone them for the next governor to address. Compared with Newsom’s plan, the Legislature’s version would increase spending by more than $6 billion.

That difference is at the heart of the dispute. Newsom is pushing for a tighter budget that reduces the gap between revenue and spending. Legislative leaders are betting that state revenues will improve and want to avoid deeper cuts now.

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat, said the Legislature’s approach is intended to prevent severe reductions to programs that many Californians depend on to get by.

The passage of a budget bill by the deadline does not end the negotiations. Newsom and lawmakers now have until the start of the new fiscal year on July 1 to reach agreement on a final spending plan that authorizes specific expenditures.

The coming negotiations will test how much influence Newsom retains as his time in Sacramento winds down. Governors typically have significant leverage in budget talks, but that power can weaken as they approach the end of their tenure. Lawmakers, meanwhile, must answer to districts where constituents may be more concerned about health care, schools and public benefits than about the governor’s long-term political future.

The tension is familiar. California governors often enter office claiming a statewide mandate, while legislators argue that they represent the needs of their communities and must protect the programs their constituents rely on. Party unity can narrow ideological differences, but it rarely erases the institutional competition between the branches of government.

For Davis, that rivalry emerged almost immediately. For Newsom, it is playing out near the end of his governorship, with the stakes centered on how California manages a difficult budget and who will bear the consequences of closing the gap.

Original source: CalMatters

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    Speaking during the opening of budget hearings Monday at the County Administrative Center in Riverside, Bianco said the department requested roughly $250 million beyond what was included in the proposed spending plan. According to the sheriff, about $138 million of that amount is needed simply to maintain current staffing levels.

    “This is a massive number that we cannot recover from,” Bianco told supervisors. “The proposed budget for us is absolutely disastrous.”

    The sheriff said failing to secure the requested funding could force the department to eliminate as many as 622 patrol deputy positions. If cuts were focused on administrative and support staff instead, the total number of positions affected could climb to around 1,000.

    Bianco said any reductions of that scale would likely need to be phased in over several years to avoid severe impacts on public safety. He warned that unincorporated communities could feel the effects first as resources are shifted to maintain law enforcement services for the 17 cities that contract with the county.

    The budget shortfall would also affect major projects, according to the sheriff. Bianco said it would leave little chance of fully opening the Benoit Detention Center in Indio, moving forward with upgrades at the Ben Clark Public Safety Training Center or building a new hangar for the department’s aviation unit at March Air Reserve Base.

    Supervisor Jose Medina acknowledged the financial pressures facing the county and said all departments would need to share in the burden of spending reductions.

    “The pain needs to be distributed across the county departments,” Medina said. “As important as public safety is, it cannot be helped not to feel some of the pain.”

    Supervisor Chuck Washington also pointed to previous budget compromises while discussing the sheriff’s concerns. During a brief exchange, Bianco said he had previously refrained from publicly discussing jail funding issues because he was encouraged to avoid the topic during earlier budget hearings.

    District Attorney Mike Hestrin also appeared before the board, requesting an additional $14 million above the amount recommended by the county Executive Office. Hestrin said the funding would help maintain current staffing levels and cover labor-related costs.

    The district attorney noted that retirements and recruiting efforts by neighboring counties have reduced staffing levels in Riverside County. He said his office currently employs 228 prosecutors and continues to face growing workloads tied to state mandates.

    Part of Hestrin’s proposal includes creating a specialized cryptocurrency and cybercrimes unit. He said financial fraud schemes are becoming increasingly sophisticated and often target senior citizens, making quicker investigative responses necessary.

    Riverside County Fire Chief Robert Fish submitted the smallest request among public safety agencies, seeking an additional $900,000 to expand the county’s nurse navigation program. The initiative allows trained nurses to assist some callers over the phone, reducing unnecessary emergency responses.

    According to Fish, the program has successfully resolved about 3,000 medical calls since its launch in October, helping keep fire personnel available for more serious emergencies.

    County Chief Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said the county faces a projected $66 million structural deficit heading into the next fiscal year, even before considering the additional public safety requests.

    Van Wagenen recommended continuing a targeted hiring freeze and relying on reserve funds while county leaders work to address long-term financial challenges.

    “Growth is flattening,” Van Wagenen said. “We have to prioritize.”

    The proposed county budget totals approximately $10.34 billion, representing an increase of about 3.5% over the current fiscal year. County officials project reserve balances will reach roughly $650 million by the end of the year.

    Supervisors are expected to continue budget discussions this week, with tentative approval of the spending plan scheduled for June 23.

    Source: City News Service

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Treatment Atlas, a free digital resource partially funded by the state, allows users to compare addiction treatment programs and see whether facilities use approaches supported by evidence. Advocates say the tool gives families in crisis clearer information at a moment when quick decisions can have life-or-death consequences.

David Sheff, the author of “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction” and “Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy,” has urged state leaders to preserve funding for the program. Sheff has written extensively about his son Nic’s addiction to methamphetamine, which began when Nic was 18, and the years his family spent trying to navigate a treatment system he has described as confusing and opaque.

Sheff said his family had advantages many others do not, including insurance, resources and the ability to seek another program when one did not work. Even with those advantages, he said, finding appropriate care was difficult. For families without reliable information or financial flexibility, the search for treatment can become a matter of chance.

Addiction is widely recognized as a medical condition, but many people who need treatment never receive it. Others enter programs that may not rely on proven methods of care. In California, nearly 10,000 people died of drug overdoses in a recent 12-month period, according to state public health data cited in the original commentary.

Supporters of Treatment Atlas say the platform helps address a longstanding problem in the addiction treatment system: the lack of clear, verifiable information about what services programs provide and whether those services align with established standards. The website presents information in plain language, making it easier for parents and other loved ones to evaluate options under pressure.

Sheff said that kind of transparency was not available when his family was searching for help. He argues that tools like Treatment Atlas can help reduce the guesswork that has long faced families trying to find treatment, especially as stigma and confusion continue to delay care for many people with substance use disorders.

The concern now is that funding for the platform could be vulnerable as state officials look for places to cut spending. Advocates warn that smaller programs can disappear during budget negotiations not because they lack value, but because they do not always attract public attention.

Newsom has repeatedly emphasized treating addiction as a health issue and has called for a more evidence-based behavioral health system. Sheff and other supporters say maintaining funding for Treatment Atlas would be a practical way for the state to follow through on that commitment.

Nearly 1 million families used Atlas last year, according to the commentary. For parents weighing where to send a child in crisis, supporters say, access to reliable information can mean the difference between an informed decision and another uncertain attempt at recovery.

Original source: CalMatters

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday faced federal lawmakers for the first time since September as he sought to defend a more than 12% proposed cut to his department’s budget and dodge arrows from angry Democrats along the way.

In his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, kicking off an expected sprint of seven budget hearings he’ll attend across congressional committees and subcommittees over the next week, Kennedy emphasized the administration’s work to reform dietary guidelines and crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.

Republicans on the committee praised Kennedy as a “breath of fresh air” and asked him to promote his department’s recent actions. Democrats, who have been furious over Kennedy’s sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, largely had a different agenda.

They needled Kennedy on what they viewed as the Trump administration’s hypocrisy on fraud, demanded to know why he was cutting budgets for various programs and slammed his efforts to pull back vaccine recommendations and messaging, which they said have caused unnecessary deaths.

Kennedy fired back, often raising his voice as he accused the Democrats of misrepresenting his work and past statements.

Here are three standout moments from Thursday’s hearing:

A standoff over measles

One heated exchange early in the hearing came between Kennedy and Rep. Linda Sanchez. The California Democrat decried recent measles outbreaks across the U.S. and asked Kennedy to answer for the fact that under his leadership, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back public health messaging supporting vaccination.

“As a mother, this horrifies me,” Sanchez said. “Did President Trump approve your decision to end CDC’s pro-vaccine public messaging campaign?”

Kennedy repeatedly refused to answer, saying first he wanted to respond to the “misstatements that you’ve made” and later praising the Trump administration’s record on preventing measles, although protections against the disease have eroded in some parts of the country as vaccination rates have dropped.

“That’s not answering my question,” Sanchez said as the two talked over each other.

But Sanchez also got Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered politics, to acknowledge that a 6-year-old who died of measles last year in West Texas could have potentially been saved with vaccination.

“Do you agree with the majority of doctors that the measles vaccine could have saved that child’s life in Texas?” she asked.

“It’s possible, certainly,” Kennedy said.

RFK Jr. denies talking about Black children being ‘re-parented’

A fight erupted between Kennedy and Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, when Kennedy vehemently denied making remarks he’d said in 2024.

The comments dated back to when Kennedy was a presidential candidate. On the “High Level Conversations” podcast last July, he said, “Psychiatric drugs — which every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”

“Have you ever re-parented, or parented, I should say, a Black child?” Sewell asked, as her staff held up a poster featuring an abbreviated version of the quote.

“I don’t even know what that phrase means,” Kennedy said. “I’m not going to answer something I didn’t say.”

“You’re making stuff up,” he later claimed.

A recording of the podcast shows he made the comments during a conversation about free rehabilitation facilities he was proposing opening at the time in rural areas around the country.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Kennedy before joining the administration was referring to spaces where young people facing alienation, mental health challenges and despair could get re-parented, which she said was a psychotherapy term for “developing the emotional regulation, discipline, boundaries, and self-worth that may not have been established in childhood.”

For Kennedy and his former party, civility is the exception

Kennedy spent most of his life as a Democrat, the scion of one of the nation’s most famous political families. Both Republicans and Democrats during the hearing began their remarks by expressing their admiration of Kennedy’s relatives, among them former President John F. Kennedy.

But again and again throughout Thursday’s hearing, the fraying of bonds between Kennedy and his former party was on full display as spiteful comments were passed back and forth.

The health secretary grew defensive and visibly agitated. He repeatedly criticized Democratic lawmakers for not giving him a word in edgewise.

“They’ve all shut me up,” Kennedy said at one point. “They give a little speech that they can go and market, you know, for fundraising, and they don’t allow me to answer the question.”

On a few rare occasions, the exchanges were civil. One representative, Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, used humor to make that happen.

“I promise to give you easy, comfortable questions if you don’t yell at me and hurt my feelings,” she told Kennedy. He promised he wouldn’t.

The post A vaccine standoff and other key moments from RFK Jr.’s first congressional hearing in months appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

It will take at least a year to transition to a tidier government because meeting notification requirements, amending and canceling contracts, working with unions and RIF requirements, planning to consolidate infrastructure, and disposing of excess property will all take time.

The annual federal budget sets the priorities, size, functions, and cost of the government for the fiscal year. Agencies have a deadline to submit their budget proposal to the White House. The White House proposal then goes to the House for consideration. Individual members propose hundreds of amendments, mostly to meet campaign promises to their constituencies. After passage through Congress, the budget is signed into law.

The government is huge and very costly, but it serves a few mandated purposes. Let’s review:

Congress’s specific tasks to enact laws to accomplish the above are enumerated in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8. They boil down to managing the government’s money and commerce, establishing courts, defining crimes and punishing violations, defending the nation, establishing the Post Office and roads, granting patents and copyrights, and overseeing the District of Columbia and federal facilities.

Inherently governmental activities are defined in law at 48 CFR § 7.503(c) and expand on the above tasks. They include conducting criminal investigations and prosecutions; commanding military forces; conducting foreign relations; determining agency policy, regulations, and program priorities for budget requests; managing federal employees; controlling intelligence operations; procuring goods and services for federal use, managing contracts, and disposing of property; approving agency responses to Freedom of Information Act requests; approving federal licensing actions and inspections; and responding to federal audits.

Basically, the overall work of the Departments of the Treasury, Defense, State, Commerce, and Justice; all intelligence agencies; the Office of Personnel Management; General Services Administration; and the Office of Management and Budget are established priorities, as are the work of Congress and the federal judiciary.

The rest of the Cabinet and the independent agencies seem to have been established solely to expand governmental assistance and control. They do little besides increase the costly regulatory burden on the productive class and rain cash on problems without solving them.

At this point, a multipath approach is needed, starting with across-the-board measures.

Get rid of the baddies. If the federal cyber corps were to do an unannounced overnight purge of all federal devices (computers, laptops, smartphones, etc.) for porn, then thousands of pink slips could be handed out the next day. Do not replace that number of employees. I’m sure Elon could help write the necessary algorithm.

Halt stupid policies in their tracks. Abolish anything that remotely smacks of DEI. Halt all payments related to gender transition. There is no climate crisis. Stop all “green/sustainability” regulations and abolish all attendant projects. For example, $29.3 billion of Energy’s $51 billion FY-2025 budget request is identified for “climate.”

Halt enforcement of all agency-promulgated regulations across all agencies that cannot be directly tied to specific legislative language. Halt all support for illegal activities, including any funding going to illegal migrants or those supporting their movement to and dwelling in the US. Stop all federal activities that promote discrimination, such as grant and contract set-asides for certain genders, races, communities, etc. Get rid of the Jones Act, The Davis-Bacon Act, and any other legislation that increases the cost of federal activities for no benefit.

Retain only competent hires. The government only employs adults. Those adults get trained annually on cybersecurity, prohibited workplace practices, ethics, etc. This training should take place one time, upon employment, with the new hire promising to abide by all the rules for the duration of their employment upon penalty of immediate termination.

Cut federal research grants. Fund only half the cost of staff, equipment, supplies, and services for a research project. If an outside organization can’t find independent funding to cover the other half, plus infrastructure and travel, then there is no need to pursue a proposed avenue of research.

Cut essential agencies down to the quick. Ask the mid- and lower-level managers where the fat is and where nonessential or duplicative work is being funded. They’ll tell you far sooner than those wanting to control an empire.

Ask the hard questions. Is there a need for mail delivery at home? Why should all citizens pay for any local public transportation or for Amtrak when it mostly only serves the NE? Why do welfare payments cover food for a family, yet we still pay for school lunches for the poor?

Start all other agencies at zero. We’re not talking about saving money here; we’re talking about justifying any federal presence and expenses. Why is an agency, commission, or board needed at the federal level? Is there any federal requirement that the states can’t accomplish with their own funds? Is there any need for the Department of Education or the EPA? Why can’t most agencies or their overseas offices be subsumed into the State Department (e.g., USAID, Peace Corps, Commerce, and Agriculture)? Why is Veterans Affairs not part of Defense? Why is Homeland Security not part of Justice? Why isn’t the US Trade Representative part of Commerce? Chop off the few top layers and just incorporate the work they do. Is there any justification for PBS?

It’s 2024. Do we still need federal intervention in farming? Housing? Labor? With less going to the federal government, the people would have a much greater voice in how their tax dollars are spent and ensure that the greatest benefit is to local needs.

Abolish federal student loan guarantees; if individuals or universities are responsible for funding higher education, you can bet the cost will go down and success will go up.

Stop passing money through the federal government. It raises the cost of a project by at least 40% for overhead of collecting, managing, and distributing the funding. So, the $1,200 you received during the SARS-CoV19 scare cost about $1,680 in tax money (yours and your children’s, plus interest).

I like good governance and don’t mind paying for it. However, many see the government as both Mommy and Santa Claus. But it’s not. Letting the government run wild for “the greater good” is a very bad idea.

Some universally applicable regulations and attendant costs make sense. Enforcing minimum workplace, transportation, food, drug, and environmental safety standards are generally good ideas. Spending nearly $60 million of everyone’s taxbucks on a 25-mile stretch of highway to enhance habitat for the Olympic mudminnow was not.

By the midterms, half of Trump’s appointees should have worked themselves out of a job.

The post Yes, We Can Shrink The Size And Cost Of Government appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The budget lawmakers approved is not the state’s final spending plan. Newsom and legislative leaders are still negotiating how to fix the shortfall before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1. But lawmakers had to pass a balanced budget by Saturday or else they would forfeit their six-figure salaries — a rule voters approved in 2010 to prevent the types of budget stalemates that had delayed negotiations in the past.

That is why Thursday’s vote was not really a public rebuke of Newsom, a Democrat who for the most part has had a good relationship with a Legislature dominated by members of his own party. Instead, the vote highlights the differences between Newsom, a second-term governor who many believe holds presidential aspirations, and a liberal state Legislature that is often more willing to take risks.

While Newsom’s budget proposal preserved most of the state’s major assistance programs, he included a number of smaller cuts that angered his Democratic allies. He proposed to stop paying for in-home caretakers for some disabled immigrants on Medicaid. He wants to eliminate a program that helps provide housing for families with incomes less than $13,000 per year. And he suggested delaying a rate increase for organizations that care for people with intellectual disabilities.

To reject these cuts, lawmakers needed to find more money. They found it by taking one of Newsom’s ideas and making it happen faster.

Newsom proposed temporarily stopping some businesses from deducting financial losses from their state taxable income, thus increasing their tax bill. It has become a common way to increase revenue during budget shortfalls. The Legislature chose to do this, too, but their plan would start the tax increase one year earlier. That generated an extra $5 billion in revenue compared with Newsom’s plan.

Lawmakers also found large budget cuts in other places. They want to cut $1 billion out of the state’s prison budget, arguing the money isn’t needed now that the prison population is about half of what it was two decades ago. And they want to cancel a $400 million loan to PG&E that would help extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

Those are just some of the disagreements that the Newsom administration and lawmakers must resolve by the end of the month. On Thursday, both sides indicated they have made good progress. Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire said lawmakers could be voting on a final budget deal by the end of next week.

“I firmly believe the final budget that we’re going to have in front of us here next week will follow the same framework that’s in front of this body here today,” he said.

One major issue that has yet to be addressed by either side is what to do about a minimum wage increase for health care workers that is scheduled to start on July 1. Newsom signed a law last year that would eventually raise health care workers’ minimum wage to $25 per hour over the next decade.

The wage increase is expected to cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in increased wages for some state workers and increased payments in the state’s Medicaid program, according to an analysis by the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center. Newsom has said he wants to delay the minimum wage increase, but he so far has been unable to get an agreement from the state Legislature.

Republicans, who don’t have enough numbers to sway policy decisions and say they were left out of the budget negotiations with Democrats, criticized the Legislature’s spending plan as unsustainable.

Republican Assemblymember Heath Flora said raising taxes on businesses to help close the deficit would be “an economy killer,” adding “our citizens are not here to provide overdraft protections.”

“We can’t continue to make up the lie that tax increases are a solution to bad management,” he said.

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener defended the tax proposal, noting it was just seven years ago that Congress slashed the federal corporate tax rate by 40%.

“All we are asking here during a difficult budget year is to be part of the solution,” Wiener said. “This is a very reasonable approach.”

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Citing California’s budget deficit, the Democratic governor wants to save around $613 million in state funds by delaying pay increases for a year for about 150,000 disability care workers. The state will forgo an additional $408 million in Medicaid reimbursements, reducing funding by over $1 billion.

Some lawmakers say this decision will increase staff turnover and vacancies, leaving thousands of children and adults with disabilities without critical services at home and in residential facilities. Disability advocates warn it could violate the Lanterman Act, California’s landmark law that says the state must provide services and resources to people with disabilities and their families.

Newsom is “breaking a promise,” says Felisa Strickland, 60, who has been searching for more than a year for a day program for her 23-year-old daughter, Lily, who has autism and cerebral palsy. “It’s creating a lot of physical and mental health problems for people, and it’s a lot of undue stress on aging parent caregivers like myself.”

Disability care workers, known as direct support professionals, provide daily, hands-on caregiving to help children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, such as autism, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy, remain independent and integrated into their communities.

In California, more than 400,000 people with disabilities need accommodation, and this population, along with seniors, is increasing. It’s unclear how big the worker shortage is because the state hasn’t released workforce data. As the demand for these workers grows generally, experts predict a shortage of between 600,000 and 3.2 million direct care workers by 2030.

Advocates say California pays most providers from $16 to $20 an hour, which meets the state’s minimum wage but falls short of what some economists consider a living wage. In 2021, the state committed to raising wages after identifying a $1.8 billion gap between the rates received by nonprofits that contract with the state to provide care and the rates deemed adequate.

Thus far, the state has provided around half that total, most of which has gone to raising wages and benefits. Workers had been expecting one more increase of $2–$4 an hour in July until Newsom proposed a delay.

Also, nonprofits say California has made it harder to compete for workers after raising wages in other service and health industries. Newsom approved a $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers that went into effect in April, and he struck a deal last year with unions and hospitals to begin raising health care workers’ wages to a minimum of $25 an hour.

Ricardo Zegri says Taco Bell would pay him more than the $19 an hour he makes as a disability care worker in a supervisory position.

“Every paycheck, it’s a discussion at home about what bills we need to prioritize and whether it’s time to start looking for work that pays more,” says Zegri, who works a second job as a musician in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Newsom wants to preserve key health initiatives, including the state expansion of Medi-Cal to low-income immigrants regardless of legal status, and CalAIM, an ambitious $12 billion experiment to transform Medi-Cal into both a health insurer and a social services provider. However, the rate delay for providing disability care is the largest savings in the Health and Human Services budget as Newsom and legislative leaders look to cuts, delays, and shifts in funding to close a deficit estimated between $38 billion and $73 billion.

Dozens of legislators from both parties are asking Newsom and legislative leaders to preserve the increase. Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen, a Democrat from Elk Grove, signed a letter supporting the raise. Although lawmakers are negotiating with the administration, she says reversing the decision to delay the pay boost is unlikely. Everybody “has to take a hit somewhere,” Nguyen says.

Krystyne McComb, a spokesperson for the Department of Developmental Services, says that even though the state would lose federal matching funds this year, it would resume drawing funds when it reinstates the plan in 2025.

The department did not respond to questions about how it plans to retain workers and fill vacancies.

Newsom’s proposal risks a collapse of the disability service system, which would violate the Lanterman Act and make the state vulnerable to lawsuits, says Jordan Lindsey, executive director of the Arc of California, a statewide disability rights advocacy organization.

Families say the state has already fallen short of the services they need. Strickland quit her job to care for Lily, the Santa Barbara mother, says. “It’s not reasonable to expect someone to care for somebody else 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she says.

Lily graduated from high school and, in 2022, completed a program that prepares youth with disabilities to transition into adult life. She had been looking forward to joining a day program to make new friends but has yet to find a spot. And due to a shortage of workers, Lily receives only four hours a week at home with a provider, who is paid around $16 an hour.

When Lily hangs out with the provider, her demeanor changes to the happy person she used to be, Strickland says.

“The system is already in crisis,” she says. “There are tons and tons of people that are sitting at home because there’s nowhere for them to go.”

The post California Disability Workers’ Raises at Risk as Gov. Newsom Faces Deficit appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — When state lawmakers in July cut $150 million from the California court system, they offered this hope to stressed-out administrators: The cuts would vanish if Congress sent the state more money before Oct. 15.

Riverside County Superior Court officials were optimistic. They stopped buying things and halted all travel and training but put off more painful cuts while they waited for relief from Washington. By Oct. 1, they couldn’t wait any longer and announced the court would shut down for one day each month through June.

“We had no choice,” said Marita Ford, the court’s chief financial officer, who said she lost $10 million from her normal $175 million operating budget.

The federal government has sent California more than $31 billion in coronavirus relief, not including loans to prop up the state’s fund for unemployment benefits. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers bet Congress would send more, especially in an election year marred by a pandemic.

But it appears that gamble won’t pay off, meaning more than $11 billion in state spending cuts and deferrals will likely stay in place through the end of the fiscal year on June 30. More than $1 billion will be cut from public colleges and universities. Another $2.8 billion will come from state worker salaries.

“I believe the strategy was a prudent one,” Newsom said last week. “I believe the strategy is still one that will bear fruit.”

The Newsom administration could still adjust the budget if Congress were to send the state more money after Thursday. But it’s unclear if that will happen.

Republican President Donald Trump announced last week he was ending negotiations for a coronavirus relief package until after the election. But he seemed to reverse himself on Friday, saying negotiations would continue.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, said he didn’t think a deal would happen anytime soon, as his priority is confirming Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I don’t know where this roller-coaster ride is going to end,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance.

The state budget cuts have hurt the courts, which have struggled with pandemic-induced backlogs and delays in processing criminal charges and settling disputes among the state’s nearly 40 million residents.

Court funding was slashed during the Great Recession a decade ago, and it has never returned to earlier levels. Newsom announced increased funding for courts in January, back when he thought the state was headed toward another multi-billion surplus. But that funding vanished when the coronavirus ushered in an economic downturn that led to a projected $54.3 billion state deficit.

In San Diego, the Superior Court has lost about 85 positions since the beginning of the year and is now at its lowest staffing levels since the late 1990s, said Michael Roddy, the court’s executive officer. Remaining employees are required to take 10 days of unpaid furlough to help make up for the $15 million cut.

“The level of funding we’ve gotten seriously impairs our ability to serve the public and get cases done in a timely way,” Roddy said.

Court delays are impacting other services, including child support. Across the state, local child support agencies have handled cases involving 2.2 million adults and nearly 1.7 million children. The budget slashes $46 million from child support administration, which means fewer workers are processing cases.

State lawmakers had increased funding for child support administration in each of the last two years and had planned to do so again this year. Instead, they took all the money back, leaving child support officials at 2018 funding levels.

Local child support agencies get involved when a parent files a case, most often seeking payment from another parent. The agencies often spend time and money on outreach, going to malls, libraries, farmers markets and community fairs to get the word out about their services.

But Greg Wilson, executive director of the Child Support Directors Association, said most local agencies are cutting back on outreach to save money.

“We felt like we took a nice step forward only to be pushed back by the winds of COVID,” he said.

-ADAM BEAM Associated Press

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