SACRAMENTO -- Making good on a promise to trim the state budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated a $55-million program Friday that advocates say has helped thousands of mentally ill homeless people break the costly cycle of hospitalization, jails and street life.
The program was one of many high-profile initiatives left in the ashes of the Legislature's bitter budget dispute, which stalled Sacramento for much of the last two months.
The impasse lifted Tuesday after Senate Republicans ended their blockade. They won few concessions, except a promise from the governor to veto $700 million from the general fund in an effort to address the state's operating deficit.
Schwarzenegger delivered Friday, citing the state's need to establish a "prudent reserve," then signing the $145.5-billion budget -- more than seven weeks past the state's July 1 deadline.
Among the cuts: $1.3 million to track hospital efforts to eliminate infections, which kill more than 7,000 Californians a year; $30 million for state parks; and $6 million to compel drug manufacturers to discount medicines for lower-income people.
Schwarzenegger ordered state health officials to find more than $6 million in other parts of the budget to keep the drug program alive, but the cuts will delay the website the state was going to set up to tell consumers which discounts were available.
He also struck a $17.4-million plan to protect senior citizens.
The overhaul of the state's conservatorship system was approved last year after an investigation in The Times that detailed how a system intended to protect seniors was plagued with fraud and abuse.
At the time, top Schwarzenegger officials said the overhaul demonstrated his determination to protect the elderly. Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento), who championed the reform effort, said the money was "critical to preventing horrendous abuses of our most frail and vulnerable seniors."
None of the cuts, however, elicited a more vehement outcry than the elimination of the program for the homeless mentally ill.
The program had been on the chopping block all summer. Advocates, including the architects of California's effort to overhaul the state's troubled mental health system, had staged a furious lobbying effort to stave off the cut.
But in justifying it, Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said local governments should step in instead. "We believe if these programs are a priority to counties, they have resources available to them to provide funding," he said.
