AUSTIN -- Painful budget cuts -- prompted by a February request from Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, and House Speaker Joe Straus -- could be coming for state health care agencies.
They told nearly every state agency to cut its state spending by 5 percent.
Just in case members of the Health and Human Services Commission forgot their cuts affect real-life families, Mom Lucy Vasquez was there to remind them: "As a parent you try to do everything you can to help your child."
Vasquez' 12-year-old son Andy has autism. Thanks to previous cuts, the therapy he gets has been cut in half.
"There children of these adults [who] don’t get the services now, so in the long run it will cost more to the state to everybody, to taxpayers,” Vasquez explained.
Vasquez fears further cuts to her son's care.
State agencies are already considering delays to state regulation of dyslexia services, leaving hundreds of special needs children on a waiting list for care, and holding off on adding new inspectors to some public health programs.
As a last resort, the Department of State Health Services has proposed closing 50 beds at each of four state hospitals in Wichita Falls, Terrell, Rusk and San Antonio.
While the state hospital in Austin isn’t on the list of proposed cuts, mental health care advocates worry that those cuts elsewhere in the state will only re-arrange the burden in a system that’s already overwhelmed.
"To me, the toughest part of your job is unintended effects, when you cut one thing it effects something else,” said Terry Cowan, Association of Substance Abuse Programs.
He warned that money saving cuts now, could lead to bigger, more expensive problems ahead as mental health care programs languish.
State Health Services Commissioner David Lakey believes there's no other way to meet the mandate set out by state leaders.
"It's impossible for us to take a reduction of $134 million without having an impact on mental health care in Texas,” he said.
All state agencies have to turn in their lists of proposed budget cuts to the governor's budget office by Monday.
