(Jupiterimages: Getty Images)

California’s Governor Jerry Brown released his budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year today and it includes “painful” cuts in healthcare and social services.

Reaction has been swift from groups that work on behalf of the poor and disabled.

From the HHS Network of CA, a coalition of organizations including the Western Poverty Law Center and Health Access:

We are appalled that Governor Brown’s solution to California’s budget crisis is $2.5 billion cuts to essential health and human services. Since 2008, California’s health and human services have suffered an astounding $15 billion in cuts, and this budget only continues the gutting of the social safety net that so many Californian families depend on. From our quick analysis, the Governor is making a $946 million cut to CalWORKS, an $842 million cut to MediCal, a $163 million cut to In-Home Supportive Services, a $447 million cut to child care, and $87 million in cuts to various other HHS services.

From Darcel Lee, Executive Director of the California Black Health Network:

Once again, the proposed budget balances the deficit on the backs of our most vulnerable communities,” said B. Darcel Lee,  (CBHN). “The number of uninsured in California grew to 7 million last year. At a time when so many families are struggling to make ends meet, we can’t afford to take away basic support programs for working families.

From the California Medical Association, reacting to the planned transition of children and teenagers in the Healthy Families Program to Medi-Cal:

“On one hand, Governor Brown is advocating for a 10 percent cut in Medi-Cal. On the other hand, he wants to add just under a million more young people to the program, which data shows is already struggling to meet the needs of the existing patients,” said Dustin Corcoran, CMA CEO. “The Medi-Cal provider network will simply not be able to accommodate this large influx of kids and teens. It’s unclear how anybody wins in that scenario.”

The governor is also calling for new taxes to close the budget deficit.  From Jean Ross, Executive Director of the California Budget Project:

The Proposed Budget includes major reductions in a number of critical areas, especially support for low- and middle-income Californians who need health coverage, child care, help in moving from welfare to work, or help financing a college education. Still, the governor should be commended for a balanced approach that calls for new revenue, instead of taking a cuts-only approach to addressing the state’s fiscal challenges.

(League of Women Voters: Flickr)

Trigger cuts have been the weapon of choice in many recent budgetary negotiations, most famously as the Congressional ‘Super Committee’ failed to come to agreement last month.

But in California, where Governor Jerry Brown yesterday announced nearly a billion dollars in additional reductions to state spending, that budget gun is jammed, as advocates for the elderly and mentally and physically disabled have managed to thwart the automatic reductions by asserting that the state’s severe cuts — some $15 billion to health and human services since 2008 — are beginning to violate federal law.

That defense has largely been the result of an aggressive legal strategy by disability rights groups, something witnessed recently when the state aborted a plan to eliminate funding for adult day health care centers in the face of a lawsuit by Disability Rights California. The centers offer health care services, shared meals and exercise among other activities and, most experts agree, help keep seniors and disabled people out of nursing homes.

Melinda Bird, an attorney with Disability Rights California, based in Los Angeles, says the state cuts are running headlong into the Americans with Disabilities Act, the two decades old civil rights law that bars discrimination based on disability. “The ADA mandates that people be provided services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs,” says Bird. “And that means providing the services to people at a home rather than in a nursing home.” Without home aides to help them bathe, dress, eat and take medications, many of these disabled Californians, says Bird, would end up in costly nursing homes or psychiatric hospitals.

Not all of which is bad news for some politicians, says Jean Ross, Executive Director of the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan watchdog group. Lawsuits can provide political cover for legislators and agency directors reluctant to cut programs they support, says Ross, but which are vulnerable in tight economic times.

“When the proposed policies the courts in some cases have ruled against were debated before the legislature, advocates [and] others would raise the concern that they might not pass judicial muster,” says Ross. In several cases, those familiar with the budget process say, lawmakers approve budget reductions knowing that the courts will likely stop them from going into effect.

In some cases, advocates for such programs are also just stalling for time. Attorneys can slow budget cuts down by arguing that recipients of public programs haven’t received adequate notice, says Mike Herald, a legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Sacramento. He cited a suit that his group filed against former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger after that adminstration sought to cut child care programs for the working poor.

“We were able to go and get a judge to say, ‘No, you’ve got to send out a notice that gives people 30 days advance warning,’” says Herald. “That pushed back the whole schedule and by then we had a new governor, and then voila he changed his position and the cuts never really went into effect.”

That said, Mr. Herald and others legal advocate insist they do not just sit on the sidelines waiting to file lawsuits, saying that they would much rather negotiate up front with lawmakers to find ways to save money and preserve vital programs. But trying to make deals with anyone in a state with as many money problems as California can be difficult.