Judge Orders State to Pay In-Home Service Workers : Budget: Meanwhile, many of Orange County’s disabled are losing the helpers they need to live.

A San Francisco Superior Court judge Tuesday ordered state officials to resume paying 155,000 minimum-wage workers who provide home care services to disabled Californians but have not been paid for 12 days because of the state’s budget impasse.

State Controller Gray Davis said he would issue checks as soon as the Department of Social Services turned over payroll records. The Wilson Administration said late Tuesday that it will comply with the court order, but it remained unclear how quickly the workers would be paid.

The interruption in payments has already resulted in hardship for many of the 171,541 poor and disabled Californians who rely on the state’s In Home Supportive Services program to stay out of nursing homes. Advocates say some workers could not afford to wait out the impasse and are quitting or sharply reducing their hours.

Shayna Geiger has a broken ankle that she blames squarely on the inability of Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators to agree on the budget, a stalemate now in its 57th day.

Crippled by cerebral palsy and severe arthritis in her knees, Geiger relies on the state home service workers to help her bathe, change a catheter and get in and out of her wheelchair.

But Geiger has lost her weekend helper, and the worker who used to come twice a day during the week now comes only in the morning. It was during one of the unattended periods that Geiger broke her ankle, tumbling onto the bathroom floor as she tried to get out of her wheelchair.

“Wilson says he knows how (the budget stalemate) is affecting people, but he has no idea,” a bitter Geiger said this week.

Bad as it is, Geiger’s situation is not the worst.

“Some people are being left in life-threatening situations,” said Stan Greenberg, executive director of the Westside Center for Independent Living in Los Angeles. “People are ending up spending nights and days lying in their own excrement because there is no one there to help them clean up.”

Many of the housebound disabled--those who are paralyzed or bedridden or mentally incapacitated--rely on home aides to buy groceries, prepare meals and assist with medication. Advocates say some of their clients are running out of food. The help they get often keeps them out of nursing homes or other institutions, which are far more expensive.

“It’s much better for them, and much cheaper than putting them in group homes or convalescent homes, which are already overcrowded,” said Rhys Burchill, executive director of Developmental Disabilities Area Board XI.

In Orange County, most of the aides serving the hundreds of disabled people at home have have continued working despite the crisis, Burchill said. But the situation could not have continued much longer, she said.

“People have bills to pay.”

An Administration spokesman said Tuesday: “We will provide the controller’s office with the tapes so that (in-home) workers can be paid. We disagree, however, with the judge’s ruling that (in-home) workers are state employees and will be seeking a resolution to that question at a later date.”

Davis has said Wilson’s resistance to paying the in-home workers was part of an overall strategy to increase pressure on the Legislature to pass his spending plan, even at the risk of causing suffering. Wilson contended that he had no legal authority to pay the workers.

The budget crisis also is affecting Orange County handicapped in another way. A regional center based in Orange, which distributes state funds for services to the developmentally disabled, has announced that it will shut down Friday afternoon if a new state budget is not signed by then.

That agency, the Developmental Disabilities Center of Orange County, funnels the funding for housing and services for about 7,000 people in the county who are retarded, autistic, or suffer from cerebral palsy or other developmental handicaps.

“When you are disabled it is like a house of cards,” explained Marilyn Holle, a senior attorney with Protection and Advocacy Inc., a statewide legal services agency for the handicapped. “With a little jostling, it all collapses.”

Karen Wheeler of Fullerton is one of those feeling the jolts. Afflicted with a severe form of muscular dystrophy, Wheeler, 37, is virtually helpless without her live-in attendant. The illness has left her so weak, she must rely on a motorized wheelchair to get around her apartment and can eat only with plastic utensils.

“Silverware is too heavy for me to lift,” she explained in a telephone interview.

Wheeler said her attendant is threatening to move out if the state does not issue a check soon for the hours he has worked. The Supportive Services program pays him $25 a day for helping Wheeler; she adds a living subsidy by providing room and board. Wheeler said her alternative is a convalescent home, at a cost to the state of about $200 a day.

“If my attendant leaves, I can’t get out of bed, I would not be able to cook, I cannot go to the bathroom,” she said. “If I am in bed and there is a fire, I’m dead.”

Most attendants are staying with their charges, state officials and private agencies report, but their hardship is often extreme. The minimum-wage jobs provide no cushion for unpaid weeks.

Benjamin Rockwell of Long Beach, who suffers from post-polio syndrome, said his attendant has been showing up hungry the past few mornings.

“I have to feed her before she can work because she’s so strapped, she is going without meals,” Rockwell said. The attendant has told him she will stay only until Sept. 1 without pay and is looking for other employment.

Elizabeth Trevelyan, 38, has been working for three years as a supportive services worker for disabled people in Twentynine Palms. On Tuesday, her financial reserves had dwindled to $7. She had run out of food for her dog and cat, and she said the phone company was threatening to shut off service.

“Wilson’s sitting there in the lap of luxury, and I’m not even getting paid for work I’ve already done,” Trevelyan complained.

Her clients include a bedridden man and two mentally ill people who require help with meals, housework and hygiene. Trevelyan said she will not walk out on them, but she is indignant that her willingness to keep working might provide an excuse for further delay in Sacramento.

“I sure wish there was a recall movement because I’d sign up to get that idiot out of office,” Trevelyan said, referring to Wilson.

Social service workers, fielding calls from frantic disabled clients, say they have spent hours trying to find them help. Paula Herman, board chairman of the Spina Bifida Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, said the budget impasse seems to have paralyzed the ability of individuals and agencies to respond.

“I am calling everywhere,” she said. “I have called Sacramento, I have called the Health and Welfare Agency, I have called the governor’s office and it is as if they are in a coma. They just say, ‘Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh,’ and it doesn’t register!”

Greenberg, of the Westside Center in Los Angeles, has made similar efforts, even organizing a demonstration Monday in front of the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles. Several demonstrators in wheelchairs were arrested as they tried to get into the building.

Tuesday, Greenberg reached for words to describe his frustration and anguish over the difficulties confronting clients of his center. He angrily denounced state officials as “insensitive” and “irresponsible,” then abandoned the language of outrage.

“I go home at night,” he said in a barely audible voice, “and I can’t sleep.”

Times staff writers Bill Billiter and Paul Jacobs contributed to this report.

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