Calif. Governor vetoes adult day care bill

Jul 27 2011

The legislation would provide new funding to help about half the seniors and disabled residents who had been covered under an older program that the state is discontinuing.

The Sacramento Bee: Brown Vetoes Replacement For Senior Care Cut From Budget
Gov. Jerry Brown riled advocates for the elderly and disabled on Monday with an announcement that he vetoed legislation to create a replacement program for senior care services scrapped as part of this year's budget agreement. Assembly Bill 96 would have allowed roughly half of the state's 300 Adult Day Health Care centers to continue to operate under a new, federally approved program. It was approved in response to an agreement to ax the Adult Day Health Care services to cut state spending (Van Oot, 7/26).

San Francisco Chronicle: Jerry Brown Vetoes Bill To Help Elderly, Disabled
The measure Brown vetoed would have replaced the $169 million Adult Day Health Care program with an $85 million alternative that served only the neediest patients. The bill was authored by Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-Woodland Hills (Los Angeles County). In his veto message, Brown said the proposed new program was "ill-defined" and that "creating a new ADHC look-alike program at this juncture is unnecessary and untimely." He said the state is working with existing centers to transition day care recipients into other programs and keep them out of institutions such as nursing homes. And, Brown wrote that his administration is working with the centers to identify alternatives (Lagos, 7/26).

HealthyCal: Brown Vetoes Adult Health Day Care Bill Vetoes Adult Health Day Care Bill
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation Monday that would have created a new program to replace the Adult Health Day Care centers the state is eliminating to save money in the budget. The centers serve mostly older Californians - about 37,000 people a year - who are at risk of being placed in nursing homes. In his veto message, Brown said the new program, while requiring less funding at first, would essentially be a duplicate of the one he was eliminating (Weintraub, 7/25). 

California Healthline: Veto Caps Tough Week For Adult Day Care
Today also was the day set aside for the court hearing challenging the elimination of the ADHC program, but a judge last week approved delay of that hearing until Nov. 1 (Gorn, 7/26).

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, there are concerns about cutbacks in group homes.

Minnesota Public Radio: Group Homes Worry About Law Change Hidden In Budget Bill
Advocates for the disabled were surprised to find new policies for group homes included in the state budget bill passed last week -- policies they said were never publicly discussed or debated by lawmakers, state officials, or the governor. Particularly concerning, providers said, was one paragraph that was inserted into the health and human services bill in the final hours of the shutdown. The bill cuts the number of licensed beds at privately-owned group homes for adults with disabilities across the state (Baran, 7/26).