Posted: Thursday January 7, 2010 Message from the Governor's Office - Please join Schwarzenegger Administration officials from the California Health and Human Services Agency for a briefing call on Friday, January 8, 2010 on the proposed budget for 2010-11 and how it will affect Health and Human Service programs.
We look forward to your participation in this call, as we all work to achieve a balanced budget in these difficult fiscal times.
Briefing Call Information
This will be a listen-only call followed by a question-and-answer session.
PLEASE NOTE: Due to the expected number of callers, we recommend that you dial into the call at least 15-20 minutes early. Sincerely,
Bismarck Obando
Director of External Affairs
(916) 324-7745Date: Wednesday December 23, 2009
The Arc of California Mourns the
Passing of Lorraine Sheehan
December 19, 2009
Last week our national office announced the passing of our very good
friend and a powerful family advocate, Lorraine Sheehan.So many advocates remember Lorraine
across the nation for her political toughness and intelligence and her
compassion and kindness.The
Disability Policy Collaboration noted that as the President of The Arc in 2003,
she signed the agreement between The Arc and United Cerebral Palsy that created
the DPC. She was celebrated in her home state by the Maryland Women’s
Hall of Fame for her many contributions including raising “four children and
six grandchildren” including her son John who was “diagnosed as deaf and
mentally retarded. Later, he was diagnosed with autism. John has
significant disabilities and lives at home with the family.Lorraine became involved in the
disability movement because of John and his needs, especially as it related to
his schooling. Later, she became concerned about independent living
opportunities for individuals with disabilities.”Shirley Dove, Past President of The Arc of California
remembers that Lorraine provided much needed support in the early 2000s as the
chapter went through a difficult time in our organizational history.Ms Sheehan was the prototypical
advocate in The Arc straight from the mold of the founding moms in the
association.She then broke out
and created a new example of an even more powerful and influential leader for
people with disabilities and their families.She was a past president for local, state, and national
chapters of The Arc and chaired the DPC.She was in the Maryland General Assembly for nine years and was
appointed by Governor Harry Hughes as Maryland’s Secretary of State for a
four-year term.
DATE: Monday December 21, 2009The state government’s revenues in November were $439
million less than projected in the 2009-10 budget, the Department of
Finance (DOF) reported yesterday. Earlier estimates had put revenues almost up
to projections, which had led to hope that the state’s financial decline might
have leveled off. Those hopes now have dimmed somewhat. The Legislative
Analyst’s Office last month estimated the combined 2009-10 and 2010 budget gap
at almost $21 billion. It’s clear that, without significant revenue increases,
health and human services programs will face budget cuts probably even more
severe than they suffered this year.
We’ve learned that the Department of Finance (DOF) asked
every state General Fund agency, including DDS, to run 2010-11 budget drills
including what they would cut under various circumstances. The circumstances
are cuts of various percentages up to 25%. We don’t know what Department of
Developmental Services told the DOF it would cut under any of the various
circumstances. But when we met with DDS Director Terri Delgadillo last week, we
left with a sense that serious dramatic cuts are being considered in the DDS
budget. The Governor’s Budget, which the governor will propose to the
Legislature no later than January 10, will include the department-by-department
cuts that DOF selects -- unless the governor himself overrules DOF, which is
extremely unlikely.
One piece of relatively good news is that, as of now, the
Legislature intends to follow the normal budget process for 2009-10, beginning
with hearings in the Assembly and Senate budget subcommittees. If that decision
sticks, and the whole budget doesn’t go immediately to the full Budget
Conference Committee like this year, it would be somewhat good news for
department with developmental disabilities. The subcommittee members would be
able to pay more attention to the DDS budget than the full conference committee
did this year and, whether or not we are able to turn back any of the
governor’s proposed dollar cuts, we might be able to influence how the cuts are
made and mitigate some of their damage in the “trailer bill” that follows the
budget every year. This year, we hit a brick wall in the full Budget Conference
Committee on both the dollar cuts and the implementing language in the “trailer
bill.”
I hope all our chapters in districts represented by the
budget subcommittee members will ask for meetings with their representatives
personally, either in their district offices now or in their Capitol offices
during the Arc’s conference in Sacramento February 19-22. Please call the this
week if possible to ask for the appointments. The are: Senators Mark Leno,
Elaine Alquist and Roy Ashburn, and Assembly Members Jerry Hill, Jim Beall,
Julia Brownley, Hector De La Torre, Noreen Evans, Bill Emmerson, Edward
Hernandez, Brian Nestande and Jim Nielsen.
If you’re not sure who your Senate or Assembly
representatives are, or how to ask for an appointment, please call me – this
week, if you can.
The other relatively good news is that our bill to try to
mitigate some of the damage of the 2009-10 budget, Assembly Bill 1260 by
Assembly Member Jared Huffman, is still alive. We’re coordinating
strategy on AB 1260 – and some other ideas -- with our allies in the DD
community. And finally, we’re also discussing overall budget strategy with the
other health and human services advocacy groups.
DATE: Monday November 30, 2009 Download the Letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown
The Arc is leading a coalition of 19 California civil rights groups that are asking Attorney general Edmund G. Jr. to take action against hate crimes.
Hate crime laws protect everyone, because everyone has the protected characteristics of gender, race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, and association with persons of those characteristics. Better, more consistent enforcement of hate crime laws will help protect every Californian.
But people with disabilities probably have more to gain from better enforcement of hate crime laws than anyone else. Crimes committed because of the victims’ actual or received disability are almost certainly the most under-reported category of hate crime. An October 2009 US Department of Justice study cites victims’ reports of approximately 143,000 violent anti-disability hate crimes throughout the United States in 2007; proportionately, that would mean more than 17,200 violent anti-disability hate crimes in California that year. In contrast, the state Department of Justice statistics for 2007 reported a total of just 1,426 hate crimes in all categories, and only three anti-disability hate crimes. Laws enforcement clearly is not recognizing anti-disability hate crimes, leaving victims with disabilities with virtually no protection from the state’s hate crime laws.
The civil rights coalition is asking Attorney General Brown to take two immediate steps:
Begin the process of applying for the assistance for hate crime prosecution that the new federal hate crime bill provided. The bill also made disability and sexual orientation protected characteristics under federal hate crime law, as they are under California law. Require every law enforcement agency in California to submit a copy of hits hate crime policy, if it has one, and information on its training of its officers concerning hate crimes. The goal to encourage every agency to adopt a formal policy and train its officers, which are the keys to better enforcement. All the policies and training must materials include the fact the disability is a protected characteristic.
The coalition’s letter to Brown is at: http://www.arccalifornia.org/GA%20Committee/HateCrimes-CivilRightsLeaders'Letter2AG.pdf
The Arc’s advocacy of better hate crime law enforcement is part of its broader work for crime victims with disabilities. The Arc is the sponsor of Senate Bill 110 by Senator Carol Liu, the Crime Victims with Disabilities Act, which will be considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee in January.
DATE: Monday November 16, 2009
On Monday we joined the campaign to remove the quiz “How Retarded are You?” from Facebook.Today, one week after joining the campaign the group has added about 2000 members and is now at 10,038.There were at least three Facebook applications and sites and today it appears they have all been removed or modified.The developers were surprised with our reactions with one saying, “ok sorry all of you who liked the quiz, but it will just have a new name now. Apparently the word retarded is to harmful to use, so its going to be dumb now” and another saying, “I did not meant to provoke such interpretations and I'm sorry for this, but nevertheless, I must say that I totally disagree and am surprised somebody imposed such statement about this application.”However, the Quiz program that was used is still running and there are three different quizzes with the same name.Please join us in reporting these quizzes and get this hate speech off the internet: http://www.gotoquiz.com/how_retarded_are_you_5.
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The Arc of California, 1225 8th Street, Suite 350, Sacramento, CA 95814. Office (916) 552-6619, Fax (916) 441-3494
Message from the Governor's Office - 
