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Archived
News and Projects LA Times Story -- Lanterman Spared Cuts
"These budget cuts are just horrible," said Sunny Maden, the president of the California Assn. of State Hospital Parent Councils for the Retarded. "These are very vulnerable people who are not very vocal and they are easy targets. Their programs are easily identified."
Maden, who has a 36-year-old son in Lanterman and is on the state Council on Developmental Disabilities, said advocate groups are still working out what the cuts will mean. She said it is clear that the cuts will affect community-based services more than Lanterman and the state's four other developmental centers.
"They're going to be devastating for work programs and day care programs and for vendors in the community," she said. "There will be reductions in staff, reductions in pay, and reductions in money for transportation."
Maden said the only reason Lanterman and the other developmental centers were spared large cuts was because there is nothing left to cut.
"The level of service needs to remain constant to meet federal licensing requirements and If they cut the budgets in the developmental centers, which are rock bottom right now, there's a very good possibility that they would lose federal funds," she said. "That would be very costly to the state."
The state's alternative was to cut the budget for community services and try to get more federal funding for those programs, she said.
"Davis and DDS are saying they are going to make efforts to do that," she said. "But the cuts right now are terribly serious."
Lanterman's director, Lou Sarrao, said from what he can tell, his facility will be spared major cuts.
"We really have to wait until the budget is finalized," Sarrao said. "But overall, I'm fairly satisfied considering the challenge the state is facing."
Sarrao said the only significant impact that the proposed budget could have on Lanterman would be the loss of seven or eight jobs if the population at the facility for the developmentally disabled falls below its level of about 650 residents.
Ken Buono, a deputy director with the Department of Developmental Services, said there were almost no funding cuts for the five developmental centers in the proposed budget.
The state's 20 regional centers, which serve the overwhelming majority of the state's developmentally disabled population fared somewhat worse.
Buono said Davis is proposing a $4.5-million reduction in what the department receives to evaluate new clients.
"Current law requires assessment within 60 days," Buono said. "This will give the regional centers up to 120 days to do that assessment."
The revised budget also includes a $6-million cut in money for new community based programs.
"It doesn't mean that new programs can't come on board," Buono said. "It just means we're not going to give them money to help them start up."
Those cuts come on top of a $52-million chunk that was removed from the budget for regional centers in the budget that Davis unveiled in January.
"On the community side, there are some reductions," Buono said. "But overall, we consider ourselves pretty lucky, given the state's $23-billion shortfall."
Another casualty of that shortfall is a plan to bring 128 severe behavioral clients -- mentally retarded people with histories of troubled behavior such as hitting caregivers and fellow patients -- to Lanterman.
When Davis' initial budget was released in January, the money for that project -- $3.78 million -- was there.
The budget's identification of the money as being for a "security improvement project" at Lanterman raised red flags for Diamond Bar residents and officials because of an earlier state plan to house 75 forensic patients -- mentally retarded people with histories of arrests for violent felonies -- at Lanterman.
After a storm of public protest, the state eventually abandoned that plan, which included the construction of guard towers and gates around Lanterman's 320-acre campus.
The proposed severe behavioral program is much less controversial, but nearby residents and officials in the surrounding cities of Diamond Bar, Pomona and Walnut have still been closely monitoring the project's progress.
No money for the plan appears in Davis' revised budget, and DDS officials say the proposal had already fallen victim to state legislators, who have recommended postponing it.
Diamond Bar City Councilwoman Carol Herrera said she has talked to Assemblyman Bob Pacheco (R-Walnut) and he told her the $3.78 million for the program will probably not be returned to the state budget for two or three years.
"Lanterman cannot do the new program without that budget money, and if there is no new program there Diamond Bar has no concerns," Herrera said. "The city has always stated that we didn't have any concerns with the programs that Lanterman currently has, or the clients that Lanterman currently has. It was the new programs being suggested, and the safety issues related to those new programs that raised concerns with our residents."
While Lanterman is the best known local facility serving the developmentally disabled, the Pomona-San Gabriel Regional Center serves more than 10 times as many developmentally disabled people by coordinating care and services through private providers.
Keith Penman, the regional center's director, said the cuts, while not devastating, will hurt.
"Any time a member of our community needs our services, the faster we can determine eligibility and identify those needs, the sooner they get service," Penman said.
He said the number of developmentally disabled people in the community system is growing at a rate of about 5% a year and with the cuts in start-up money for new programs, the burden to serve those people will fall entirely on the community.
"The way the community system historically has grown is that state resources are set aside to encourage the community to develop new programs," he said.
Bob Baldo is the executive director of The Assn. of Regional Center Agencies, a Sacramento-based group that represents the residences, programs and vendors who subcontract with the state's 21 regional centers to provide service to developmentally disabled people living in the community.
He said the proposed cuts bring back memories of the big reductions to developmental services in the 1990s under then-Gov. Pete Wilson.
"We've sort of been through this process before," he said.
Baldo said although the governor's proposed cuts are not huge in terms of the Department of Developmental Services' overall budget, the effects of the cuts are.
"It really means that you're going to have to reduce services," he said. "There are many who would argue that we're not providing the services that we should be providing already." Read More Archived News Stories AB896 General Human Interest Litigation State Budget
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