The state budget is here, and unfortunately it hasn’t really made anyone happy. Republicans and Democrats alike have complained that they didn’t get exactly what they wanted, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has publicly complained about the entire budget process and its end result.
That end result is exactly what the county is grappling with right now. Days after the budget was approved, the county did get details, but not all of them. Officials are still waiting to hear back from the state on the fate of a few programs, most in either the Social Services or Health departments. In general, though, the verdict is in, and it’s a mix of good and bad news.
First, the good news. Terri Nisich, assistant CEO for the county, prepared a recap of the budget for county use. She explained that there are a few things the county can be grateful for. The first is the Indian Gaming funds of $1.3 million. The county has received these funds in the past to offset Chumash Casino impacts on county coffers. The money is used to pay for fire and emergency response, and there had been a possibility that the money would be cut. It wasn’t.
More good news: The county will be paid back $1.5 million in costs incurred during the presidential primaries. Once again, there was a chance that these funds would be cut, Nisich said, but they weren’t.
Finally, Proposition 42 was sustained, meaning that local roads won’t be under-maintained and full of potholes this year, because the county has $3.5 million to maintain them. The Department of Justice crime lab, which police departments throughout the county use, was also funded with $1 million.
“If you look at the initial budget proposals, we did much better than some of the earlier predictions led us to believe,” Nisich said.
Under the Proposition 98 guarantee, $58.1 billion in funding was given to kindergarten through high schools. Maggie White, spokesperson for the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, said that the district was right on with its predictions, and neither budgeted too much nor too little for this school year. The school board was also pleased to discover that the $500,000 the board set aside for deferred maintenance will be matched by the state as usual this year, though the state’s idea of matching in 2008 is contributing $488,000.
That’s all good news, or at least as good as can be expected in tough economic times, Nisich said. There’s also some bad news—and a lot of it has to do with the Department of Social Services and the County Health Department.
Social Services won’t be reimbursed this year for increases in the cost of doing business, or operating costs. Reimbursement is frozen at 2001 levels and, as prices have gone up, the state hasn’t increased those levels. That means the department has lost about $6 million since 2001. Social Services also isn’t receiving another $1 million reimbursement for Medi-Cal administration cost increases.
Cuts to Public Health and the Mental Health departments are still pending, Nisich said. Those two departments have been told that $400,000 to $600,000 worth of cuts are to come.
Some of the cuts that will hurt the worst in Public Health include cuts to case management funds to help children with their medical services, and the ocean water testing program, which tests the levels of bacteria in water at public beaches, said Assistant Deputy Director of Public Health Susan Klein-Rothschild.
The Multipurpose Senior Services program, a service that helps elderly men and women stay in their own home instead of a nursing home, also received major cuts, Klein-Rothschild said, and she and others in her department are waiting to hear what might be next.
At the Department of Social Services, Director Kathy Gallagher said that some of the most painful cuts have been to Adult Protective Services, which protects senior citizens from elder abuse, and CalWORKS, a program that helps families get off of welfare by helping men and women find jobs and get job training. CalWORKS will be cut by $2 million, she said, and Adult Protective Services, already a small division, is losing $100,000 dollars.
Gallagher admitted that health and human services have been a target of cuts throughout the state. She said that with money for education and prisons wrapped up in propositions that guarantee a certain amount, the only other pot of money that the Legislature can look to is health and human services.
Gallagher said that 20 years ago the state put more of an emphasis on public health and funded it accordingly. In the last five years, though, the state has been chipping away at that money.
“It’s a shift in priorities in California,” Gallagher said.
She said that her department is looking into ways to cut its budget and just opened a call center to replace face-to-face consultations for Medi-Cal and food stamps.
“We’re not going to get new money, so we’re looking into ways to do business differently,” Gallagher said.
That’s a trend that might spread across the county. Nisich said that the staffs at the County Executive Office is constantly crunching numbers to make sure the county is on track with its budget. This year, they’re going to have to be even more careful, she said. As part of this year’s budget plan, Schwarzenegger can make mid-year budget cuts if the state’s revenue doesn’t meet projected levels, Nisich said.
“Our thought is there will be some sort of mid-year reductions,” she said.
Those mid-year cuts would take place in January, around the same time that the county is working on its own yearly budget. It’s going to be a tough year, Nisich said—for Santa Barbara County, and for all local governments.
Contact Sports Editor Sarah E. Thien at sthien@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 2-9, 2008.