Community Living
Fund Raided to Balance Mayor Newsom’s Budget
by Patrick Monette-Shaw
It has been widely reported that
Mayor Newsom’s FY ’09–’10 proposed budget
raids $2.3 million out of the City’s public campaign financing
program, a program required under City law.
Sadly, completely unreported by the news media is that Newsom
is also raiding $1 million from a fund established to help elderly
and disabled San Franciscans, even though a response to a public
records request indicated there were 129 people on a waiting list
for those funds. This $1 million raid is in addition to
an almost $1 million cut the Department of Public Health proposed
to its Health at Home program serving, among others, seniors and
disabled people.
Gavin Newsom’s web site for his campaign to become governor
states:
This page on his web site is sheer
spin control, touting his purported successes helping senior citizens
despite the fact that his record as mayor proves otherwise.
If gubernatorial candidate Newsom doesn’t believe we’re
meeting obligations to help the elderly, why is he raiding funds
for the elderly to balance his mayoral FY ’09–’10
City budget? If he’s elected governor, will he feel emboldened
to do the same thing with the State’s budget?
Catherine Dodd, Newsom’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Health
and Human Services, announced on Thursday, June 11 during a meeting
of the Mayor’s Long-Term Care Coordinating Council that Newsom
has taken $1 million from a currently unspent $5 million balance
in the City’s Community Living Fund (CLF) in order to balance
his FY ’09–’10 budget. Dodd didn’t elaborate
on whether Newsom has any intention of ever repaying the $1 million
he’s raiding from the CLF.
This is the same Newsom who prevented the full 1,200-bed rebuild
at Laguna Honda Hospital, by cutting the now $593 million replacement
facility to only 780 beds — and the same Newsom who prematurely
cut Laguna Honda to only 780 beds prior to opening
the new facility in order to help balance his FY ’08–’09
City budget. This is also the same Newsom who permitted
a mid-year Department of Public Health budget cut that closed
the Adult Day Health Care (ADHC) program at Laguna Honda Hospital
serving seniors and people with Alzheimer’s in the spring
of 2009.
For her part, Dodd also reported to the LTCCC on June 11 that
Newsom was only cutting the Department of Public Health’s
budget by $34 million; she may not have read page 55 in the Mayor's
430-page proposed budget submission that he is reducing the Department
of Public Health’s budget by $128.4 million (and the Human
Services Agency with another $15.9 million cut, on page 54).
More importantly, why is candidate
Newsom raiding a fund created by San Francisco’s Board of
Supervisors in 2006 to assist the elderly, when a response on
December 16, 2008 to a public records request reported there were
129 people on the CLF waiting list?
The CLF was created in 2006 to assist elderly and disabled residents
of Laguna Honda Hospital, or people “at risk” of admission
to Laguna Honda, to live independently in the community. Notably,
the ordinance creating the CLF was authored by San Francisco’s
Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Sophie Maxwell, Tom Ammiano,
Bevan Dufty, and Fiona Ma, not by Newsom, despite the fact that
Newsom appears to be belatedly taking credit for having created
the fund (his web site for governor indicates he has “twice
helped secure” CLF funding, when in fact it is a set-aside
required by the Board’s Ordinance number 0198-06 that does
not require any involvement by the mayor to fund). He’s again
claiming as his own record initiatives other legislators, including
Ammiano, have introduced on their own.
The program is administered by San Francisco’s Department
of Aging and Adult Services (DAAS) through the Institute on Aging
and other organizations.
According to the Institute on Aging’s web site, “the CLF program funds home
and community-based services, or a combination of goods and services,
which help individuals who are currently at risk of being institutionalized.
The program uses a two-pronged approach: (1) intensive case management;
and (2) purchase of services.” The CLF program makes money
available to vulnerable elderly and disabled San Franciscans for
services and resources not funded by any other program.
The CLF’s top priority is to assist residents of Laguna Honda
Hospital and patients at San Francisco General Hospital who are
able and willing to be discharged to community living. The program
also assists individuals on the Laguna Honda waiting list —
people at SFGH, other hospitals, and at home — and individuals
at “imminent risk” for nursing home or institutional
placement.
Types of services supported by the CLF includes, but is not limited
to, additional in-home support service hours, adult day health
care, durable medical equipment and other assistive devices, emergency
food, home delivered meals, home repairs and adaptive modifications,
“patch” funding for transitional housing, respite care,
Medi-Cal “share-of-cost” assistance, short term rent
subsidies, and transportation to medical and other appointments.
The CLF was established as a Category 4 special fund, “meaning
that funds may be appropriated, interest shall be accumulated,
and that any fund balance shall carry forward year to year.”
The CLF was passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors on
July 18, 2006, requiring that DAAS report every six months to
the Board of Supervisors about the level of services provided
from, and costs incurred by, the fund. It is not known whether
DAAS has appeared before, or reported to, the Board of Supervisors
six times (i.e., every six months) since first receiving CLF funding
in FY ’06–’07.
It is thought the CLF has received $3 million in each of the past
three fiscal years, totaling $9 million. The funds are permitted
to be carried forward annually. To reach a $5 million account
balance, the fund appears not to have spent 56% of the $9 million
in funding it has received since 2006, not including interest
the account has earned. Looking at it a different way, the $5
million unspent balance in the CLF account represents 83% of a
two-year allocation of $6 million.
The Board of Supervisors needs to enact legislation that specifically:
If San Franciscans truly care about meeting our obligations
to care for elderly and disabled people, we can’t permit
City officials to raid funds set aside for that purpose. And we
can’t have 129 (or more, by now) people sitting on waiting
lists while accounts grow to massive unspent balances. City officials
must either spend these funds in the year intended and needed,
or they must stop the pretense that they want to meet societal
obligations to help the elderly and disabled.
Patrick Monette-Shaw
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