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Opinion: The Californians Prop. 1E would harm

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Lisa Watson, executive director of the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles, responds to The Times’ April 20 article, ‘Propositions 1D, 1E ask voters to think again.” If you would like to respond to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed in our Blowback forum, here are our FAQs and submission policy.

Five years ago, Californians voted to provide funding for the most basic mental health services by passing Proposition 63, which placed an additional 1% tax on personal income of more than $1 million. But as The Times reported in its April 20 article, ‘Propositions 1D, 1E ask voters to think again,” state legislators want a good chunk of that money back. Proposition 1E would raid the funds raised by Proposition 63 to the tune of $460 million over the next two years to help balance the state’s books.

That the state is desperate to raise money is understandable, but the effects of the recession extend far beyond the walls of the state Capitol in Sacramento. Countless numbers of Californians have lost their jobs over the last year and have come to reply on publicly funded mental health services -- precisely the people who would be hurt by Proposition 1E.

Meet Jane. The recession has caused Jane to first lose her job, then her car, eventually her apartment and finally control of what used to be manageable bipolar disorder. Jane visits a skid row homeless drop-in center, where she is referred to the state’s Department of Mental Health, to which she takes a bus the next morning. Careful to arrive by 8 a.m., Jane waits several hours without a guarantee she will be seen to do an intake so she can get an appointment for a week later. After another week of figuring out where to eat, sleep and shower in addition to managing her illness, she returns to be evaluated by an overworked and underpaid psychiatrist who prescribes treatment, the only option for which is medication.

Assuming the whole other set of agencies and paperwork Medicare requires has been completed, Jane gets on yet another bus to fill her prescription and silently prays that her medication -- one of dozens that all have unpredictable and severe side effects -- will be the right one for her so she won’t have to go through this process again.

The money that will be diverted if voters pass Proposition 1E will be taken from programs that remove the barriers women such as Jane face every day. One such program at the Downtown Women’s Center’s Project Home -- set to open in summer 2010 -- will allow Jane to receive meals, showers, benefits advocacy, mental healthcare, therapy and holistic treatment options at the same location, plus help her reenter the workforce once she is stable. Not only is this a better option for Jane, but it also will be less expensive than any of the other possibilities for supporting her in the future.

The state budget and initiative systems are flawed, but strategic solutions to these problems do not include targeting a community that voters have identified as one of our most vulnerable and historically overlooked by legislators -- Proposition 1E being yet another example. Mental health advocates are not the well-moneyed special interests guilty of creating our budget crisis. They are just people trying to help Jane, and they need the resources to do it.

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