Good for California foster care

For years, Washington and Sacramento foolishly threw away money by paying to place abused and neglected children with strangers, even after studies and experience showed conclusively that most would be better off with members of their extended families. Finally, in the last several years, policy has caught up with reality and government is ready to provide smarter, more cost-effective and results-oriented support to steer foster children to successful, independent adulthood. All that remains to get California on track is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature on AB 12, the landmark bill to align programs here with new, rational federal guidelines while pumping millions of dollars of federal money into the state — money that otherwise would be left on the table.

Were the bill in front of the governor in any other year, undoubtedly he would sign it without hesitation to secure his legacy — not yet widely known — of improving the prospects for California’s thousands of abused and neglected children. But this year presents a quandary, with the state nearly $20 billion in the hole and without a spending plan a record 79 days after the constitutional budget deadline. The bill would make the state more humane and in the long run more efficient, but in the short run it requires new spending. Failing to sign would be foolish, but signing would commit to spending money we don’t have. What should he do?

Fine-tuning in the final days of the legislative session, driven by the Schwarzenegger administration and child advocates, has made an already smart bill more prudent and responsive to budget reality. A badly needed transitional housing program to ensure that foster children don’t end up on the street when they turn 18 would still be funded, but within an existing spending allocation. Counties, which otherwise would have to foot the bill for government’s failure to steer children in its care to adulthood, would pay nearly $9 million of the cost of helping former foster kids make it to age 21 while getting work or into college. Those changes remove more than a third of the state general fund costs that otherwise would have been added to the state budget.

Further savings would be realized by limiting the number of youths who can be placed in costly group homes, which should be used primarily as specialized care facilities for those with particular needs. And as a necessary concession to fiscal reality, new support for adults aging out of foster care would be delayed and staggered over a three-year period. Significantly, the Legislature and the next governor would have the power to review the progress of the program and to decide in 2014 whether to complete the job by making the final appropriation for adults completing the transition from foster care.

Schwarzenegger should sign the bill without further delay.