Board holds packed hearing on proposed Department of Public Health cuts; community leaders warn of lost services and bigger costs

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors convened a committee-of-the-whole hearing on June 17 to take public testimony on the Department of Public Health's proposed budget reductions, during which providers, clients and advocates said the cuts would damage a fragile safety net.

The hearing, required under state law, focused on about 22 percent in proposed reductions to community behavioral health, substance abuse, specialty clinics and contracted nonprofit services. Hundreds of residents and agency staff testified that the reductions would close programs, reduce case management and transportation services, and force higher-cost care into hospitals and jails.

Why it matters: Testimony at the Belinson hearing described programs that providers say prevent costlier outcomes: detox and residential substance treatment, methamphetamine-focused programs, case management for homeless and mentally ill clients, outreach vans that transport people to care, the Trauma Recovery Center and the psychosocial medicine clinic. Speakers said cuts would likely increase emergency-room visits, hospitalizations, incarceration and unsheltered homelessness.

Providers and clients spent most of the afternoon describing program-level impacts. "The cuts that we're looking at this year are amongst the worst that I've seen in my 20 years of working in San Francisco," said Bill Hirsch of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel. "We are witnessing the dismantling of a system of care that has taken 25 years to build up to…