Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - May 17, 2004
Sara Zaske, Staff Writer
Preliminary estimates show that San Francisco's loss from the state has shrunk by $41.9 million in the revised budget. A few key social service programs have also been granted a reprieve, including the Medi-Cal low-income health subsidy program and a drug-assistance program for AIDS patients.
But in the big picture, there are still threatening clouds on the fiscal horizon, according to Mayor Gavin Newsom.
"At the end of the day, if the governor had submitted this in January, we'd all have been very upset and very concerned," Newsom said. "It's like the old adage: It's half as bad, but it is still bad."
San Francisco officials had joined other California cities and counties in negotiating with Schwarzenegger for the changes contained in the May revision, so there were few surprises when the budget was released on Thursday.
However, Newsom said he still wants to fight to save more programs that benefit The City. He is especially concerned about a $12.8 million blow to in-home care for the elderly and disabled as well as a $2.3 million hit to The City's juvenile crime prevention programs.
This past weekend, San Francisco's advocacy groups were also preparing to do battle with Sacramento to save programs that took big hits in Schwarzenegger's new budget.
"It still looks bleak for poor families," said Joe Wilson, the associate director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth.
Schwarzenegger left in place an estimated $800 million hit to the state's CalWorks welfare programs, including the elimination of childcare subsidies for former welfare recipients.
San Francisco's CalWorks program will lose an estimated $1 million, and Wilson estimated that the loss of childcare alone would affect 1,400 children of the working poor in The City.
"Enabling working parents to keep working is a good thing for [the] state's economic recovery," he said. "It makes no sense from either a social or an economic standpoint to restrict access to childcare for working families."
While childcare advocates prepare to lobby state legislators to change the budget before the June 30 deadline, other activists may get a bit of a break this summer.
For the last few years, Dana Van Gorder, director of state and local affairs at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, has had to endure long summer months of wrangling with the Legislature to save funding for the state's AIDS drug assistance program.
This year, however, AIDS activists were able to convince Schwarzenegger to forgo his plan to cap enrollment in the program that provides life-saving drugs to low-income AIDS and HIV patients.
"We made it clear to the governor that this is a matter of life and death," Van Gorder said. "Fortunately, he seems to be a man who is able to reconstruct his position in light of different information. This is the first time in years we have been able to come to agreement about this program rather than wait until the last bitter moment of the budget struggle."
In San Francisco, roughly 3,100 people -- a full 13 percent of the entire state program -- are enrolled. If the treatment funding had not been saved in the state budget, Van Gorder planned to appeal to The City government to make up the $3.25 million difference.
Regardless, there will still a battle for AIDS funding on the home front. The City still faces an estimated $310 million deficit, and the Department of Public Health recently prepared a contingency budget plan that included slashing $950,000 from several AIDS programs.
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