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Los Angeles Times

June 9, 2009

Budget knife threatens popular state programs

Eliminating mandates for absentee ballots, aid to police and firefighters killed on duty and animal shelter rules could save $100 million. Local governments would have to pay to save them.

By Michael Rothfeld

Linda Soubirous and her daughter, Kena Hintergardt, are at risk of losing lifetime health benefits. Photo: Christina House / For The Times
Linda Soubirous and her daughter, Kena Hintergardt, are at risk of losing lifetime health benefits. Photo: Christina House / For The Times.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Linda Soubirous understood what it meant to the families of police officers and firefighters when state lawmakers ensured that they would receive health insurance for life if their loved ones were killed in the line of duty.

She was 31, with a year-old daughter and pregnant, when her husband, a Riverside County sheriff's deputy, was fatally shot three years earlier, in 1993. Soon after, the county compounded the devastation by refusing to pay for the family's insurance as if he had voluntarily quit his job.

Now, Soubirous is worried that other survivors will endure the same trauma if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeds with a little-noticed plan to indefinitely suspend the 1996 law because of the state's budget crisis, along with about 30 others put in place over decades to address the needs of Californians. The laws, known as state mandates, put requirements on local governments and obligate the state to pay for them.

Some affect huge groups of people, such as the law that made absentee ballots available to voters, a privilege used by up to 60% of voters. But most, like the law for families of peace officers -- costing an estimated $1 million a year -- protect small, vulnerable groups.

"It just helped the families so much," said Soubirous, 47. . "It was beyond words to me. I know that the state is in just a huge mess and the governor has to make some terrible choices, but I just think that these families have already paid such a huge price."

"It almost feels like it's cornering local government into picking up the tab for something the state has previously agreed to pay for," Logan said.

Nor are local governments likely to stop pursuing the recovery of children abducted in custody disputes or holding abandoned animals for the time required by a 1998 law that costs the state nearly $25 million a year, said Paul McIntosh, the executive director of the California State Assn. of Counties. Instead, they will just lose reimbursement.

"Many counties have expanded or built new animal shelters based on the requirement to keep those animals for an extra three days, and the state provides funding for that," McIntosh said.

A number of the mandates deal with the disabled and mentally ill. One requires coroners to investigate deaths at mental hospitals, and others guarantee lawyers during hearings to renew commitments to mental institutions. Sean Rashkis, an attorney for Disability Rights California, a nonprofit advocacy group, said that could delay hearings and leave mental health patients institutionalized "months after the commitment time has run" out.

Counties billed the state $164,000 last year to provide lawyers in conservatorship hearings, where judges decide whether to give control of a developmentally disabled person's finances to someone else. Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) said the "minuscule" savings is not worth the harm it could cause.

"There's a lot better places to look than to deprive disabled people of legal counsel," he said.