Care Givers Struggling to Survive : Budget: The state impasse cuts two key sources of funding for centers for the disabled. Operators threaten layoffs and pay cuts.

Gail Horrigan, who operates three Oxnard homes that care for 120 mentally retarded adults, has stopped paying her rent, taxes and other bills because the state, locked in a bitter budget impasse, has cut off her funding.

On Tuesday, as the budget battle between Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Legislature entered its third month, Horrigan was telling her 20 Oxnard employees that she may have to shorten their hours next week if Medi-Cal funding is not restored.

Not including staff salaries, the three homes cost about $11,000 a month to operate, and Horrigan was trying to figure out how to keep her creditors at bay.

Her landlords, she said, “are not real happy. This is the first month we’ve missed payments. We’re kind of day-by-day, letting them know.”

Like hundreds of other people who provide care to about 2,000 severely handicapped children and adults in Ventura County, Horrigan was impatient and angry about the standoff in Sacramento.

“I’m real tired of the politicians fighting over the issues,” she said. “We’re caught in the middle. We’re not like a furniture company that can one day close the door. We have people that depend on us to live. If I don’t survive, the people we serve may not survive.”

The budget struggle has cut two key sources of funding to the people who care for the handicapped in Ventura County.

Medi-Cal payments were halted in mid-August after a judge ruled that the state was not obligated to fund this program until it had adopted a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1.

In addition, the Tri-Counties Regional Center, which provides services and funding to 5,000 handicapped people in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, has received no state funds since July 1 because of the budget impasse. As a private agency, it has not been eligible for the IOUs that have kept other state services afloat.

The agency obtained a $4-million bank loan to continue operating through the summer, but these funds are nearly exhausted, its administrators said.

Last week, Tri-Counties Regional Center officials said they might be forced to shut down if no budget was adopted by today.

Instead, the agency told its 145 staff members that they would all have to take a 40% pay cut until state funding is restored. The agency is also postponing payments to care homes and outside professionals.

“We’re going to try to hang on the next few weeks,” Jim Shorter, the agency’s executive director, said Tuesday. “By the end of September, we’ll be basically flat broke. We’ve been operating on borrowed money since the beginning of the fiscal year. Our credit line is gone.”

Shorter believes that handicapped people are suffering because they have little clout in Sacramento.

“Oftentimes the politicians ignore the most vulnerable citizens because they’re not worried about their support,” he said.

As of Tuesday, no Regional Center employees had resigned because of the 40% pay cut. But many employees are angry about it.

“I’m at the bottom of the pay scale, and the 40% cut would probably mean that I’d be making only $600 a month after taxes,” said a secretary at the agency’s Thousand Oaks office, who asked that her name be withheld.

She said she will have to borrow from family and friends to pay her apartment rent, car payments and other bills. “I was just laid off from another job in February, and I had to use all my savings after that happened,” she said.

The situation was even more serious for some of the people who work at care homes for the handicapped throughout Ventura County. Some operators said they will soon have to cut employees’ hours or place them on unpaid leave until state funding resumes.

Directors of the Valley Children’s Homes in Simi Valley have told their 40 workers, who provide round-the-clock care to 24 youngsters with cerebral palsy, that they may not receive their next paycheck if the budget is not adopted soon.

Cathy Doyle, assistant administrator, said owner Glenda Goennier has borrowed money and used her personal savings to keep the homes running. The payroll expense alone is $15,000 a week.

Doyle does not know how long she’ll be able to hang on to her nurses and aides if she cannot hand them a paycheck in mid-September. “These are the people who rent rooms and apartments,” she said. “Their landlords are not going to take IOUs.”

But nurse’s aide Maricela Diaz, 25, said that because handicapped children need a great deal of care, she and some of the other employees will continue to work even if their pay is delayed.

“If that happens, we’re going to volunteer,” she said. “We’re going to keep coming in and take care of the clients.”

The funding problem has not been confined to Ventura County.

Of the 21 private regional centers that usually funnel state money to the handicapped in California, one had closed, four were operating with a skeleton crew, and many of the remaining ones had cut their staff and services on Tuesday.

Times staff writer Psyche Pascual contributed to this story.

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