The Governor today signed the budget and blue penciled hundreds of millions in funds to create a budget reserve. The blue pencil cuts are controversial, not only because of their harmful affects on the state, but also because many believe they violate the state constitution. The Governor is only allowed to use his blue pencil to reduce appropriations from the budget bill. But the budget passed in February and the Governor at that time used his blue pencil authority. Now he is contending he can do it to this bill even though it only makes reductions to appropriations, and does not make new appropriations. This issue is likely to end up in court.

The Governor made no further reductions to the CalWORKs program which many had feared. The only cuts he could have made to CalWORKs are to non-cash aid items like administrative costs and services. But this time there were no additional cuts. SSI grants were not reduced beyond the actions taken in the conference committee to reduce grants for singles down to $845 a month and grants for couples down to $1,409 a month.

But there were several severe cuts in the social service arena. The most stunning was a $124 million cut to child welfare services that comes on top of a previous cut of 10%. This will likely result in hundreds of social workers being laid off and caseloads for those remaining rising to levels that are irresponsible and unmanageable.

The Governor also cut Healthy Families by $50 million more on top of the $53 million cut by the Legislature. Hundreds of thousands of children will lose health insurance and already 22,000 children are on the waiting list for Healthy Families. He cut $50 million in funds to AIDS programs and he eliminated all $16 million in funding from the Department of Public Health for domestic violence shelters. This cuts DV funding by 30% and will likely close the door of many shelters.

The damage done in this budget will be felt both now and for years to come. With most of the CalWORKs cuts not beginning until July, 2011, the public is likely to see the ripples of this tsunami for years. Get on your life preserver. The rides going to be rough.

Please find attached our quick summary, links to the two CalWORKs budget bills and a link to the Gov's blue pencil cuts.