CSAC Carefully Considering Senate Plan
Today, at the invitation of Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, CSAC participated in a press conference where the Senate Democrats unveiled a budget proposal to restructure certain state/local programs. Our goal in participating in the event was to provide the county perspective on reforming the state and local relationship.
You can read CSAC’s statement and find related documents about the proposal here.
Counties must be at the table for any discussions on how restructuring could and should work. It’s the only way any such proposal will succeed.
Is the Senate plan something we endorse? Not yet. But we appreciate being invited to dinner, and we’re going to read through the menu very carefully – and review some of our own recipes – before determining what’s best for us.
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Paul McIntosh is Executive Director of the California State Association of Counties. He can be reached at pmcintosh.at.counties.org. |
Our crime rate for non-homicide Type 1 violent crimes is currently six times that of Los Angeles. What the state has planned would make our communities unliveable. We simply would have to let people out early or with a slap on the wrist. We don’t even have the staff in probation to monitor them. We had to lay a quarter of them off.
Currently, we have a 6-9 month waiting list to serve a jail term for a minor offense. The jail is currently full all the time. We will have no place to put inmates if the state returns them to us. We are too small and too rural to attract private rehabilitation facilities for drug offenders and there is currently a long waiting list for outpatient programs for substance abusers. This has not been helped by the shrinking program money from the state.
As many of the services (such as Human Services and mental health) require a contract, I would like to explore what happens if the county says that we have had enough and refuse to participate any more.
We have angry constituents who are rightly asking why there is no longer any money for libraries, roads, in-community deputies and fire houses, when a huge amount of money is going to entitlements and bad actors and their families.
I am very glad to see that county government interests will be represented at the budget table. Through all the State budget challenges, I have been concerned that reforms that are discussed are involving reforming from the bottom up. I am convinced the State government requires reform from the top down. So many programs at the State level seem redundant and not cost effective. I have encouraged our county program directors to evaluate the county programs for population value and economic value to our county. I would encourage the State to do the same. Karen Rickman, Sierra County Candidate for District 5 Supervisor.