With the Governor’s budget proposal, there are any number of tragedies, big and small.  Despite that fact, the Republicans continue to pretend that somehow tax cuts are some sort of serious proposal.  And no, sorry, no matter how many times you repeat “tax cuts pay for themselves”, that won’t make it true. In fact, a 2005 CBO Report showed that at most 28% of revenue lost to tax cuts returns to the federal budget through growth.)

But this budget, even with Brown’s “halfway solution,” would still net some draconian cuts.  For example, look at the suggested $750 million of cuts to the developmentally disabled:

Most areas of Brown’s budget proposal include specific reductions, but the plan lists only $216.5 million in detailed cuts in the Department of Developmental Services. The budget asks for another $533.5 million in unspecified reductions, with the department expected to come up with ideas by the end of March.

“I think we need to really look at the issue in a more full manner than just say, ‘We’re going to have an arbitrary number put into the cuts,'” Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, said at a legislative hearing Thursday. “I don’t think people with developmental disabilities deserve that.”(SacBee)

There are two competing interests in how you make cuts.  First, if you tell departments how much the cut will be, and then tell them to make it, you are likely to get somewhat more knowledgeable cuts.  Of course, this may lead to the preservation of personnel over services.  However, if you give specific cuts, at least there is some idea of what’s going to happen.

But when you give over half a billion of unspecified cuts? Well, frankly it is too much to balance out even with the most severe of cuts.  Adding another $12 Billion of cuts would essentially require the closing of our prison system and higher education.  It simply isn’t a serious solution.  Adding additional tax cuts would put us on the path to Somliaization.

And as Skelton referenced yesterday, our initiative system is broken.  We are asking our voters to make micro decisions on issues that they just don’t understand. Perhaps that could be construed as elitist, but honestly, how many people really have the time to think about tax policy decisions?  Legislators take months of time to discuss and analyze the issue, but voters are supposed to do it in five minutes at the ballot box?

At the very least, Brown has given up the ghost of stupid budget tricks.  Perhaps the Republicans can join him in the real world as well?

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget butchery cuts services from IHSS recipients.  After November 1, 2009, people with an overall functional index score below 2 will no longer qualify for IHSS.  People who receive a functional index ranking below 4 for any domestic service will no longer receive that particular service.

Functional index ranking is how the county determines the level of needs people have.  As part of the assessment for services, the county determines the person’s ability to complete certain tasks, such as housework, laundry, shopping and errands, meal preparation and cleanup, eating, bathing and grooming.  Also they assess the person’s control over respiration, memory, bowel, bladder, orientation and judgment.

Now, in addition to assessing need, the “functional ranking system” is being used to take away services from the people that need them.  Let’s take, for example, an individual who has a “3” ranking for sweeping floors, a “4” for changing bed linens, and a “5” for cleaning bathrooms.  Under the new law, the individual would no longer receive service for sweeping floors because the ranking for this service is “3” and therefore too low.  The individual would continue to receive service for changing bed linens and cleaning bathrooms.  

There is also a “functional index score” (as opposed to the functional ranking index just mentioned) which is now being used as a line drawn to sever services from those who need them.  After a social worker assesses a person’s needs, the county gives a “functional index rank from “1” to “6” for each of the tasks.  This ranking is then averaged out.  The result is called the “functional index score.”  Effective November 1, 2009, the new law eliminates IHSS services entirely for individuals with a functional index score below level 2.    

On October 1, 2009, Disability Rights California and other organizations filed a lawsuit to stop these cuts.  We are hopeful and hard at work to reverse this dark ideology as soon as possible.  

This narrow vision couldn’t come at a worse time.  At a time when the State should be preparing for growth nothing is being done to prepare for the exponential rate of growth in the populations of people who rely on these services to live from day to day.  Instead of alleviating the pressures that the future burdens us with, the Governor shoots holes in the bucket that he asks us to fill.

However, we are happy to say that persons who receive protective supervision or paramedical services will not have their IHSS services cut regardless of their function index rankings or score.

Today is the last day to register to vote. Personally, I'd like to see same-day registration. After all, we are living in the era of cheap and tiny computers. This is a fundamental fairness issue, legal voters simply should not be turned away. Nonetheless, here's the voter reg SoS page. Other interesting stuff:

•  Frank Russo writes about a S-USA poll in the Rumble in the Bubble (SD-03). (I do some work for Leno.) Leno leads overall 42 -22(Nation)-21(Migden). Besides the fact that Leno is the only candidate with net favorables, a number of note is the breakdown for “liberal” voters. Leno leads that category 47-21(Migden)-17(Nation).
• The Bay Guardian has released the audio of their endorsement interviews at their 2008 spring election center. I'm a big fan of news media outlets releasing such interviews.  Good work SFBG!
• The elected delegates met yesterday in Sacramento. They talked, chose more delegates, and generally had a good time. The media seems to want to make this some sort of bloodbath, but it seems there was more about unity than anything else.
• Another item to be slashed in the next budget: Aid for California's disabled.  Perhaps the legislators will go and help some of these Californians themselves? Maybe set up an oxygen tank here, help in the process of dressing there.  I think Roger Niello and Mike Villines would be excellent at that. After all, they want to cut these funds, so why not provide a bit of their time in leiu of the money that is so desperately needed.  That would help, right?  Ok, not so much.
• Skelton points out the truth: the 2/3 requirement for budgets is “ludicrous.” 

Democrat Lockyer, a former state Senate leader and attorney general, traces California's budget woes back to the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 — the historic property tax cut — and Sacramento's subsequent decision to bail out revenue-short local governments and schools.

“We've been bailing the sinking ship ever since,” he says. “This may be the year when we have to say, 'OK, we're going to make these awful cuts and voters are going to see what the consequences are.' That's kind of a scorched-earth approach, but people somehow think that the budget is going to be balanced by the tooth fairy.

“I don't like it, but there are days when I think that voters need to persuade themselves and reluctant legislators that cuts like these are unacceptable. It's time to do whatever needs to get done to escape this annual torture.”

I'd start by placing a measure on the ballot allowing budgets to be passed by a majority vote — as they are in 47 other states.

But a two-thirds vote is what's ludicrously required today. So the legislators and governor must deal with it.

Yesterday we got almost a thousand views of this video message from the California Yachting Association, and we shut down the California Republican Party’s phone linestwo days before their state convention.  But I’m not certain that the CRP got the message yet.  They need to hear from us again today.

916.448.9496.  Please call.  Operators are standing by!

In all seriousness, this visibility campaign is of a piece with some contemporaneous attempts at legislative activism.  Yesterday seniors and the disabled descended on the Capitol to protest cuts to the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program.  Low-income community groups are organizing against what they believe is an insufficient state cap-and-trade program that would allow polluting industries to buy the rights to continue to pollute (I’m not sure if I totally agree with them, but it’s an interesting article).  This entire year is going to require this kind of activism if we want to wind up with a state government that doesn’t dismantle its public education system, make health care less accessible and preserve tax avoidance strategies for the wealthy like evading the sales tax on yachts.  These people have to be watched, vigilantly, and through that sunshine will come eventual change, whether they accede to it themselves (unlikely) or we go ahead and take their seats away (likely if we work our butts off).