Today’s column in the LA Times takes the Governor to task for his unconscionable cut of homeless services that were working and saving money, in favor of a tax loophole for Dick Ackerman’s yachting pals.  Lopez has spent lots of time on the streets of Skid Row, and gotten to know the homeless people that struggle to survive down there.  One of them, Bill Compton, died Monday, and it’s grimly ironic that this happened at the same time that the program inspired by his successful move off the streets had its funding cut.

Bill Compton’s Project Return helped pave the way for AB 2034, which, until its funding was cut by Schwarzenegger last week, was keeping nearly 5,000 people off the streets of California with a smart mix of housing and all the necessary support services.

The governor’s staff has argued that the program can be funded with other revenues, such as money from the voter-approved Mental Health Services Act (Proposition 63). But state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, who introduced AB 2034 when he was in the Assembly, said the latter ploy is both illegal and a subversion of voter intent.

“I was sick to my stomach for two days,” said Steinberg, who believed until last week that the governor would be on his side, particularly since the program has substantially reduced hospitalization, incarceration and criminal justice costs for its participants.

For exciting yachting news, the flip…

Lopez then visited the Marina del Rey yacht club and did a little reporting about what was kept in the budget at the expense of getting homeless people off the streets:

If the governor was looking for savings, he could have taken his scalpel to an estimated $45-million tax break for purchases of yachts, planes and RVs.

To find out just how the break works, I called a yacht company in Marina del Rey. A sales rep told me I would have to buy the boat outside of California, but there’s a loophole available in that regard. Technically, he said, if I took ownership of the boat three miles off shore, I’d be out of the state.

In other words, if I wanted to buy a $100,000 sailboat, I would sign the contract at the shop in Marina del Rey and then navigate around the tax bite with a little vacation.

“We would effect delivery out of state, three miles out, with a hired skipper who would take you out,” the salesman explained. If I then sailed down to Mexico for 90 days, I’d avoid the sales tax of $8,250.

That’s roughly the cost, Van Horn told me, of keeping someone in the AB 2034 program for a year, if you count the matching Medi-Cal funds.

May Bill Compton rest in peace.

This is why Dick Ackerman – and Arnold Schwarzenegger – deserve the certificate of merit for being rich and not homeless.  The creativity with which they engineered yet another tax cut for the wealthy while dismissing those who are in vital need of help must be recognized with some sort of award.  There will be a special place in the afterlife for those who put this together.  I won’t say where.

(Here’s a Word doc of the Certificate. You can fax a PDF with a free trial at fax1.com.

Apparently fax1.com requires a non-free email service. If you want to send a free fax and you only have Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, use Fax Zero. – promoted by David Dayen)

This will be faxed to Sen. Ackerman’s office today:

CERTIFICATE OF MERIT

The National Coalition of Yacht Owners Who Hate The Homeless (NCYOWHTH) proudly bestows this award upon State Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman (R-Irvine), who has the courage and foresight to be a yachting enthusiast and not a mentally ill homeless person, and is therefore eligible for a major tax break instead of having his social services eliminated.  As an organization of yachters who will also benefit from the same tax cut to the tune of $45 million dollars, coincidentally almost the same amount that would fund the rehabilitation program for mentally ill homeless people, we applaud this setting of the real priorities for our state.  Sen. Ackerman has been a leader in the twin fields of yachting and not being homeless for many years, and we are pleased to award this certificate today.  We ask you to be the keynote speaker at The National Coalition of Yacht Owners Who Hate The Homeless clam bake in Tustin later this year.  After all, there wouldn’t be an organization this strong without you.

Sincerely,
David Dayen
Executive Director, The National Coalition of Yacht Owners Who Hate The Homeless

You can send this too:
Capitol Office fax: (916) 445-9754
District Office fax: (714) 573-1859

Here’s some trivia about State Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman which may shed some light on the late round of budget cuts for social services.  No, Ackerman’s not a mentally ill homeless person, but he is a yacht owner.

Several lawmakers at the center of the budget dispute did not return phone calls or could not be reached. They included Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine — a yacht owner who pushed to ease the tax burden on owners of yachts, planes and RVs.

An Ackerman spokesman said the senator was unavailable.

In other news, it’s 79 degrees and excellent sailing weather in Irvine!

Here’s a little more on this supposedly unnecessary mental health program, cleaved for the benefit of yachting aficianados everywhere:

It has served 13,000 people since November 1999. There are about 4,700 participants today. Among those enrolled as of January, there were 81% fewer days of incarceration, 65% fewer days of psychiatric hospitalization and 76% fewer days of homelessness compared with their pre-enrollment days.

Rusty Selix, executive director of the California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies — like Steinberg, a Proposition 63 coauthor — said the cost of incarceration can be six times higher than the cost of enrolling someone in the mental health program.

“Rehabilitation costs money. But it’s worth it,” said Adrienne Sheff, director of adult services at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center in Van Nuys. Los Angeles County receives nearly a third of the state funds through AB 2034 and serves 1,700 people.

This program was designed to lessen the cost of those homeless who eat up emergency services – like the guy who showed up at San Diego ERs 87 times in a calendar year.  Ultimately this move, done purely to satisfy short-sighted bean-counters, will end up costing the state far more.  But that burden will be placed on municipalities and local governments, not the state coffers.  Making the bean-counters – and yacht owners like Dick Ackerman – very, very happy.

OK, time for a little role-play.  You’re the post-partisan governor of a large state.  The state budget comes into your hands with cuts almost to the bone, but you promised an additional $700 million and just don’t know what to do.  Who’s going to get the shaft?

Now ask yourself this…

Who doesn’t vote?

Give me a sec…

I know!  Mentally ill homeless people!

The Governor used his line item veto to cut the entire funding nearly $55 million for the AB 2034 housing program that serves over 4,700 adults with severe mental health needs, all of whom were homeless and frequently hospitalized or incarcerated before getting into the program. The Governor said in his veto message deleting the funding that:

“…while I support the goals of the program, this reduction is necessary to limit program expansions and to help bring ongoing expenditures in line with existing resources. To the extent counties find this program beneficial and cost-effective, it can be restructured to meet the needs of each county’s homeless population using other county funding sources, such as federal funds, realignment funds, or Proposition 63 funds. I am reducing Schedule (6) to eliminate the $12,000,000 legislative augmentation for the 5 percent rate restoration for mental health managed care. This technical veto is consistent with the legislative action taken in [Budget] Item 4440-103-0001.”

Mental health advocates say that the immediate effect of the funding cut by the Governor could result in thousands of those people in the program being forced back on the streets at risk of hospitalization and incarceration… The actual outcome of these programs depend on response of local mental health agencies and the Department of Mental Health – but advocates say the cut seeks to supplant funding from the landmark Proposition 63 Mental Health Services Act – funding that was meant they say only for new community based programs – and specifically not meant to fund existing programs.

This is a bait and switch we’ve seen before by budgetary bean counters.  Dedicated funding that’s supposed to go ON TOP of budget outlays ends up being the only funding source.  So the will of the voters is completely overturned; instead of supplementary mental health funding, Prop. 63 becomes the sole funding.

There were some other cuts, including $6.3 million that would have gone toward the California Discount Prescription Drug Program.  But the mentally ill homeless cuts were the most drastic.  And it once again shows that those with the softest voice end up getting hit the hardest.

UPDATE: State Senator Darrell Steinberg, who authored AB 2034, the bill whose funding was eliminated by the Governor’s budget cut, is shrill.

“The program provides over 4,500 homeless Californians living with mental illness with permanent housing, where they can regularly receive medical and psychiatric treatment and job counseling. The program has been wildly successful according to the Department of Mental Health, reducing the number of days spent homeless by 67 percent, increasing the number of days working full-time by 65 percent, and reducing the number of days incarcerated by 72 percent.

“This is a program that works, that saves the state money in incarceration costs and that humanely treats a population that usually gets short shrift in Sacramento,” Steinberg said. “I’m extremely disappointed that the Governor used his veto power in a way that punishes the least among us.”

“Steinberg noted that the Governor chose to keep in the budget a $45 million tax break for yacht, private plane and recreational vehicle owners. Under the tax plan requested by Republican lawmakers, luxury vehicle owners can avoid paying sales taxes on purchases if they keep the vehicles out of California for just 90 days after purchase. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, opening the loophole costs Californians $45 million a year.

“That’s the state of California’s budget: $45 million in tax relief for yacht owners will stay while $55 million to save thousands of homeless mentally ill is being sacrificed,” Steinberg said. “It’s wrong morally. It’s wrong economically.”

You would think that a governor would try to step in on July 16 when a budget is due July 1.  And you would think he would be doing everything he can to manage the prison crisis given the rapidly approaching deadline when judges may cap the number of inmates.  But you’re just not post-partisan (or lazy as hell, you choose).

last week closed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attention thousands of miles east as he ventured to Florida for a turn before the cameras and a $25,000-per-table Republican party fundraiser.

To Capitol insiders, the trip was the latest troubling evidence that despite the many big issues before him, the governor’s interest in the nuts and bolts of governing has ebbed. Splashy announcements remain his trademark, but after the cameras pack up, Schwarzenegger has often not followed through. As a result, key parts of his agenda are foundering.

I think my biggest problem with those paragraphs is the word “ebbed.”  When was he EVER interested in governing?  Sure, he likes magazine covers, and getting to wear anything with the California state seal on it, but actually GOVERNING.  Not his style.

Over…

The governor waited until July 9 to bring the four legislative leaders into his office for a “Big 5” budget meeting — the forum he and other governors have used to keep negotiations moving. The leaders from both parties emerged to announce that little got done. No more meetings have taken place.

“We’re all starting to say, ‘Mr. Governor, phone home,’ ” said state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles). “We’ve got a budget impasse. We need you to engage.”

Republicans too are warning Schwarzenegger that his legacy is at stake.

“He clearly has a case of wanderlust,” said Bill Whalen, a Republican political consultant. “While it is good and swell to go around the world and talk about global warming, being governor of California is very much a pothole job. It is about dealing with matters both large and small.”

The Republicans are obviously being willfully moronic about the budget, claiming that they don’t have to show what $2 billion dollars in programs must be cut but just that it has to happen.  The Governor, however, might be even worse, showing no leadership at all in sleepwalking through Sacramento, stopping to pause at wildflowers while the impasse continues.  You’d think he’d be embarrassed at this, just like you’d think he’s be embarrassed at trying to cut mental health services for the homeless (actually, he probably had nothing to do with that, I’ll bet a staffer typed it up).  But then you wouldn’t be as post-partisan and awesome as the Governator.

Dan Walters wrote a story today saying that governance is the overriding issue in California.  That certainly becomes a lot tougher when there isn’t a governor.

UPDATE: Via Randy Bayne:

As for getting help from Governor Schwarzenegger to help get the needed six Republican votes, Nuñez says, “I don’t know that the Governor, to be quite honest with you, has the wherewithal to be able to garner Republican votes at this point.”

LOL.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his cronies claim to have solved the state prison crisis, but that is very far from the truth. Sure, we are spending billions of dollars on building new prisons. (All the better to incarcerate 1% of our population) However, we still can’t seem to find the cash to actually treat the mentally ill in our prison system.  Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ordered pay hikes to all mental health professionals at our state prison system to help ease the staffing shortage in the department:

The federal judge overseeing reforms in mental healthcare for California prisoners has ordered the Department of Mental Health to significantly raise salaries of all clinicians at state mental hospitals who treat the sick prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton had indicated at a Sacramento hearing Monday that he might require pay raises only for psychiatrists. But his written order, released late Wednesday, is far more sweeping – applying also to psychologists, licensed clinical social workers and the psychiatric technicians on the front lines of day-to-day care. Still, it remained far from clear Thursday when or how the raises would be implemented and whether the majority of hospital workers would even receive them.

The move came after Karlton’s December order to sharply raise pay for prison clinicians inadvertently helped trigger an exodus of staff from the state hospitals – which treat some of the same prisoners whom Karlton’s court aims to protect. {LAT 5/25/07)

So, the raise at the prison system just made it clear that we heavily underpay our mental health professionals at the state hospitals.  I know nobody really wants to go back to the halcyon days of behemoth state hospitals and the high rates of institutionalization, but there needs to be some balance.  Clearly our homelessness rates have been affected by the massive cuts to mental health care, and this in turn leads to additional prisoners.  We keep treating the symptoms and ignoring the disease.  So, let’s build more prisons, that’ll do it. That’s way more practical than addressing the underlying root causes.  Because my mama always said, “A pound of ineffective ameliorative care is worth jack squat.” Oh, hmm, is that how that goes?

This is a must-read piece by Steve Lopez today on the makeup of our state’s prison population.

In the ongoing flap over prison overcrowding in California and what to do about it, little consideration has been given to inmates such as Stephan Lilly.

I wrote about the Los Angeles man late last year, when his conviction on charges stemming from a scuffle with a security guard were counted as a third strike. Despite a years-long battle with schizophrenia, and the fact that one of the three strikes was a threat that involved no physical contact, Lilly got 25 to life.

California’s prisons are jammed with thousands of mentally ill inmates who didn’t get help before their incarceration and aren’t likely to get much while locked up. Not only is that like a chapter out of the Dark Ages, but the high rate of repeat crimes among parolees is costing taxpayers a fortune.

Hear, hear.  Why are we sending people who need medical treatment to rot in jail?  Why are these mentally ill people, who make up 1 out of every 5 inmates, given little or no treatment while incarcerated?

Fortunately, Sen. Darrell Steinberg wants to do something about it.

Tomorrow, state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, will introduce a bill that calls for a complete overhaul of mental health care behind bars, with the goal of putting a big dent in both the overcrowding problem and the high recidivism rates.

“I would argue very strongly that it’s the missing element of corrections reform,” Steinberg said. How can you talk about getting a handle on overcrowding, he asks, without doing something about the fact that an estimated 20%-25% of the state’s 170,000 inmates are bipolar, schizophrenic, clinically depressed or otherwise afflicted?

You want to build something in this state?  Build more mental hospitals.  Bring in more psychologists and psycho-therapists.  Build something that will help permanently reduce the impact on the prison system.

Please read this article.  It’s a damn shame that most legislators are so obsessed with law and order that they won’t take the simple steps necessary to relieve this crisis and move the state forward.

Well come on down, because the Department of Mental Health is desperate for a few good professionals.  The state built a fancy, state-of-the-art mental health hospital, but they forgot one thing…where are they going to get staff? You see, this brand-spanking new hospital is in Coalinga.  Coalinga you ask?  Yes, it’s in Fresno County, about 70 miles outside of the city of Fresno and right smack dab between SF and LA.  Approximatel 3.5 hours from both, and a couple hours from Bakersfield.  It seems, for some reason, mental health professionals aren’t flocking to come live in Coalinga.

Jackie Speier, one of my favorite state senators (perhaps b/c she is my senator…), wasn’t so impressed with the planning on this one:

“Talk about wasteful spending,” said Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, who is closely involved in overseeing prison issues. She called the hospital a fiasco that, in her view, is a perfect symbol of the state’s poor planning and poor use of resources. “It is just irresponsible not to use this facility,” Speier said.(SF Chron 9/18/06)

You know, I understand the temptation to put these facilities out in the middle of the Central Valley.  But you have to consider staffing it!  As Rob Cordry would say, “I mean Come On!”. Sacramento Geniuses…right Arnold?