Seniors will take it in the shorts with the 2008-09 budget Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law on Tuesday.
The governor made $510 million in line-item vetoes - cuts in addition to those approved by the state Legislature in the two budget bills it sent to the governor.
"There are pages of veto line items and they are all targeting health and human services related areas," said Phillip Crandall, director of the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services. "Seniors took a big hit."
The governor eliminated the $150 million senior citizen renter's tax-assistance program.
"That program puts up to $425 into the pockets of people making up to $44,000 per year in income," said Cindy Denbo, executive director of the Area 1 Agency on Aging. "Last year, we helped save people in Humboldt County $1.2 million. That's just huge: real money in people's pockets that they spend here."
Crandall said the governor also saved another $41 million by eliminating the tax rebate for low-income seniors who own their own homes.
"Evidently, he has continued to do a line-item veto in certain areas and the California Department of Aging and all its programs were really impacted," said Joyce Hayes, executive director of the Humboldt Senior Resource Center.
Home-delivered meals, Alzheimer's resource centers, congregate nutrition programs, Multipurpose Senior Services Program, Brown Bag Program and Senior Legal Hotline are only a few of the impacted senior programs.
"It's much deeper cuts than what the budget itself had and it hits almost every program we have," Hayes said. "It will take a few days to filter through this."
"The long-term care Ombudsman and Supportive Services Program just got hammered," Denbo said as she filtered through a partial list of vetoes. "It was set for a 6.5 percent reduction - $250,000 - in January."
With a swipe of blue pen, it became a $6 million cut.
Similar story for Senior Community Employment. Denbo said the county has 20 slots for part-time work for seniors. The line-item veto doubled the expected cut.
Denbo said her information for her state department, last updated 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, is incomplete.
"Clearly, the last thing I have in hand doesn't address everything: we heard about the renter's rebate from the state Franchise Tax Board.
"None of us were too hopeful, but some of this is just devastating and it is still incomplete. We're still working on it to see how it will shake out."
A report from the California Disability Community Action Network stated the blue pencil shaved the state Department of Aging's local assistance budget 23 percent - from $56.1 million to $42.9.
Essentially, that takes the senior advocacy and services program back to his January proposals, most of which were rejected by the Legislature.
Crandall figured his department will absorb additional unexpected cuts of $1 to $2 million three months into the present fiscal years.
The governor reduced Adult Protective Services funding by $11.4 million, eliminated the mentally ill repeat offender program and slashed another $70 million from California's "welfare to work" program - CalWORKS.
"We'll take a hit of several hundred thousand dollars in CalWORKS," Crandall said. "Two reductions impact the county's ability to conduct eligibility and get women ready to work coupled with making it more difficult to get them into child care. Overall, it's going to reduce our ability to move the unemployed into the workforce."
Crandall expected to shut down the mentally ill repeat offender program in two weeks.
"We have about 80 inmates that have mental health issues in the correctional facility right now," he said.
The specialty program targets those with severe mental illness. Mental Health Services Act funding will continue to provide care to the most severely mentally ill.
"MHSA money continues to flow, but we are losing ground," Crandall said. "We lost the mentally ill homeless program last year, the mentally ill repeat offender program this year."
Crnadall is most concerned with Adult Protective Services, where the caseload for abuse and neglect has doubled in the last few years and "funding is being reduced from its previously inadequate level."
"I'm gravely concerned about the status of our senior and disabled populations," he said. "We are reducing basic living support opportunities at the same time we are reducing APS capacity, which is our only program to monitor."
The state Department of Alcohol and Drugs Programs absorbed significant cuts, including the elimination of the $8 million California Methamphetamine Prevention Campaign.
Public Health also took a big veto hit, losing $6.2 million from infectious diseases and $2.7 million from domestic violence services.
"With his line item vetoes, the Governor has made a bad budget worse," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California. "The additional cuts would deny discounts on drugs for potentially millions of Californians and make it even harder to get and stay on Medi-Cal coverage."
The governor can reduce a specific line item amount from a program or service without having to veto the entire bill, but only if the veto does not require a change in state law or violate federal law.
"It's gone through many iterations and each version has contained, unfortunately, many more disproportionate reductions," Crandall said. "This has been a pretty dismal year in terms of county-operated programs. I think the earlier discussion around spreading the pain around to different departments has been abandoned."
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