CALIFORNIA - News from June 10, 2009

Linda Soubirous understood what it meant to the families of police officers and firefighters when state lawmakers ensured that they would receive health insurance for life if their loved ones were killed in the line of duty.

She was 31, with a year-old daughter and pregnant, when her husband, a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy, was fatally shot three years earlier, in 1993. Soon after, the county compounded the devastation by refusing to pay for the family’s insurance as if he had voluntarily quit his job.

Now, Soubirous is worried that other survivors will endure the same trauma if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeds with a little-noticed plan to suspend the 1996 law because of the state’s budget crisis, along with about 30 others put in place over decades to address the needs of Californians. The laws, known as state mandates, put requirements on local governments and obligate the state to pay for them.

Some affect many people, such as the law that made absentee ballots available to voters, a privilege used by up to 60% of voters. But most, like the law for families of peace officers -- costing an estimated $1 million a year -- protect small, vulnerable groups.

“It just helped the families so much,” said Soubirous, 47. “It was beyond words to me. I know that the state is in just a huge mess and the governor has to make some terrible choices, but I just think that these families have already paid such a huge price.”

By suspending the laws, which the Legislature must approve, the state could save $100 million a year, a fraction of its projected $24-billion deficit. And counties and cities would not have to follow dictates that have existed in some cases since the 1970s.

Local governments would no longer have to run programs to help infants exposed to drugs. They would not have to keep stray animals alive for three extra days before euthanizing them. No longer would they have to conduct an AIDS test on suspects whose blood comes in contact with their victims, or notify those who report stolen cars of the location and condition of recovered vehicles.

If local officials chose to continue the programs, they would have to find money for them, even though many have had to cut budgets already and the governor wants the state to borrow from their revenue.

Schwarzenegger would not suspend every state mandate: He would leave untouched a set costing $57 million a year, most of it to train police on racial profiling, commit sex offenders to mental institutions and address domestic violence. H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance, said the steadily climbing deficit left no choice but to propose suspending the rest.

Some who would feel the effects said they were unaware that their benefits were in jeopardy. Hank Lacayo, the president of the Congress of California Seniors, said he did not know until called by a reporter about the plan for absentee ballots, which many elderly voters use because it is hard for them to get to the polls.

“What is next, are they going to eliminate elections?” asked Lacayo, 77, of Newbury Park. “I’m afraid that for the sake of cutting, we’re going to do away with the democratic process.”

Local officials and advocacy groups said it would be difficult or expensive for counties to halt some of the programs.

State officials have said that they can save more than $28 million a year by suspending state absentee ballot requirements.

But Chris Carson, the government director for the League of Women Voters of California, said that for a county to stop providing ballots for everyone, it would have to conduct the time-consuming and expensive task of determining which voters would remain entitled to them under federal law because they are in the military, live overseas or are physically unable get to the polling place.

Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder called it “odd” for the governor to suggest suspending a program that was so popular. Los Angeles County billed the state $3.2 million for absentee ballots in the last fiscal year.

“It almost feels like it’s cornering local government into picking up the tab for something the state has previously agreed to pay for,” Logan said.

Nor are local governments likely to stop pursuing the recovery of children abducted in custody disputes or holding abandoned animals for the time required by a 1998 law that costs the state nearly $25 million a year, said Paul McIntosh, the executive director of the California State Assn. of Counties. Instead, they will just lose reimbursement.

“Many counties have expanded or built new animal shelters based on the requirement to keep those animals for an extra three days, and the state provides funding for that,” McIntosh said.

One mandate requires coroners to investigate deaths at mental hospitals, and others guarantee lawyers during hearings to renew commitments to mental institutions. Sean Rashkis, an attorney for Disability Rights California, a nonprofit advocacy group, said that could delay hearings and leave mental health patients institutionalized “months after the commitment time has run” out.

Counties billed the state $164,000 last year to provide lawyers in conservatorship hearings, where judges decide whether to give control of a developmentally disabled person’s finances to someone else. Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) said the “minuscule” savings is not worth the harm it could cause.

“There’s a lot better places to look than to deprive disabled people of legal counsel,” he said.

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michael.rothfeld@latimes.com