By Wendy Lazarus, Founder, The Children’s Partnership

As we head into that time of year when our young people are graduating from high-school

and college, many commencement speeches will acknowledge the sacrifices many parents make to ensure their children succeed. Imagine how much more difficult that becomes when a child requires medical care and his or her parents are unable to access a doctor or health care coverage. As legislative leaders and the Governor wrestle over budget decisions to decide the fate of children who rely on Healthy Families, our state’s moms and dads deserve someone to stand up for them.

In a recent Capitol Weekly piece, I described the details of how health care for nearly a million California kids hangs in the balance as the Legislature completes its budget deliberations, which includes the Governor’s proposal to close the doors of the Healthy Families Program. The Legislature has an opportunity to pass what the Assembly and Senate Budget Subcommittees did: keep all kids, except those required by the ACA to move to the Medi-Cal program, in the Healthy Families Program. By any measure, Healthy Families is highly successful. California children who are newly enrolled in Healthy Families have been shown to have a nearly 63% improvement in performance and paying attention in class. Studies also show Healthy Families has substantially improved kids’ access to needed health care and produced meaningful improvements in their physical, mental, and social well-being.

The Governor plans to transfer nearly one million children in Healthy Families into California’s already overstretched Medi-Cal program over a brief nine-month period, starting in October 2012. Not only does it leave the Medi-Cal program inadequate time to prepare to receive so many new kids and get them set up properly in a new health care program, but families are already facing difficulties finding a doctor or dentist who will take their kids under Medi-Cal. So Medi-Cal needs more time to shore up the network of doctors for the children it already serves before stretching its capacity to add almost 900,000 more children. This is not the time to move nearly a million children from Healthy Families.

Instead of this overreach that could undermine the progress made in promoting healthy kids, a common sense, alternative approach is recommended by over 40 organizations. We recommend a more gradual shift, moving 200,000 Healthy Families kids into Medi-Cal-those kids who, based on the new federal health reform law, will be enrolled in Medi-Cal with their families by January 2014.

Last week, Governor Brown released a May revision to his budget proposal that ignored recommendations for an incremental approach. These huge disruptions to health care programs for nearly a million children do not even produce significant budget savings, so why put these children at risk? Any parent sending their graduates off to their future knows that being a parent is a tough job, 365 days a year. Today’s parents should not face a lack of access to health care for their children. The Governor and Legislators should protect the children covered in Healthy Families AND help parents and the families that rely on them to have healthier–and more secure– lives.

Wendy Lazarus, Founder & Co-President of The Children’s Partnership, has been an advocate for children, nationally and in California, for more than three decades.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has been called a lot of things, but never a leader in criminal justice reform. Yet, last week the CDCR took a positive step towards dealing with our broken and excessively costly prisons system while Assembly Members continued to run in circles. It seems the Assembly has set the bar for leadership so low, even the CDCR has met it.

Last Thursday, the CDCR announced it would close the largest youth prison in California, Herman G. Stark, largely regarded as one of the worst of the six remaining costly state run youth prisons.  Given the 75% recidivism rate of youth leaving these institutions, closing the youth prisons and diverting youth to the local level is one of the real reforms our coalition has called for to improve public safety and end wasteful prison spending. As part of the People’s Budget Fix, we have proposed keeping young offenders at the local level, closing all six of the costly and ineffective youth prisons, and diverting half of the budget currently spent on these prisons to local programs. If fully implemented, this reform would save $200 million a year.

Closing the largest youth prison is an excellent start which will save $30-40 million by the CDCR’s estimate. But we’ll need to do more if we’re going to come up with $1.2 billion in savings. The need for action could not be more urgent: we must find those savings in the Corrections’ budget to avoid more draconian cuts to education, health care and other public safety programs like domestic violence shelters and drug treatment programs.

Moreover, most Californians agree we need to cut wasteful prison spending. Polls show that most Californians think we should cut the Corrections budget and we should protect funding for education. Most Californians also agree that state prison should be reserved for people who commit violent offenses, not petty ones.

Yet, the Assembly cannot agree on what seems like common sense to the rest of us: people who commit low-level crimes like petty theft and simple drug possession should be held accountable on the local level, not in prison cells at a cost of nearly $50,000 per person per year. It shocks the conscience that Assembly Members were willing to vote for billions of dollars of cuts to education-the most important program to average Californians-but are afraid to cut wasteful prison spending by even a fraction of that.  

Even if the Assembly passes its compromise bill this week, the CDCR and the Governor will have to come up with another nearly $1 billion in cuts. How? Without legislative action, the options for the CDCR and the Governor narrow, but they do have options. For example:

• Keep all young offenders local: The CDCR should close the five other youth prisons and divert all young offenders to local facilities and programs, to achieve the full savings of $1 billion in five years.

• Convert death sentences: The Governor should convert all death sentences to permanent imprisonment putting an end to the costly charade of capital punishment in California and saving $1 billion in five years.

• Expand alternative sanctions for technical violations of parole: In response to some technical violations by low-risk parolees, the CDCR should expand use of non-incarceration sanctions, including more intensive supervision, drug treatment and vocational training. In five years, net savings could surpass $1 billion.

Real reform of our criminal justice system will take years, not weeks. But it must start now. The reforms approved by the Senate and supported by the Governor and the CDCR should be easy for the Assembly to adopt. But if the Assembly doesn’t want to be part of the solution, than we should move on without them.

Natasha Minsker is death penalty policy director of the ACLU of Northern California. The People’s Budget Fix coalition includes the ACLU of Northern California, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Drug Policy Alliance, and Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes.