Disabled and Needy Again Facing Aid Reductions : Government: State spending plan calls for a 4.9% cut in grants for the blind and for welfare recipients.

Aid to Ventura County’s neediest residents--including the low-income blind and disabled--would drop for at least the third consecutive year under the budget plan being considered by state lawmakers.

The state budget package calls for a 4.9% cut in state grants for the blind and disabled as well as for welfare recipients.

For Port Hueneme resident Dolores Ward, who is blind and unable to work, this would mean that her $300 monthly state check would drop about $15. But Ward, one of 13,500 county residents who receive such assistance, points out that this is on top of the $100 she has lost to budget cuts the last four years.

“Pete Wilson is picking on the blind and disabled, and he wants to be President--I mean, c’mon,” Ward said. “We’re going to be punished because he’s sloppy about where he takes his knife.”

Ward, 58, said she receives a total of $689 in state and federal assistance each month. She and a roommate pay $670 for a two-bedroom apartment, not including lights, gas and other bills.

“I can barely make ends meet now,” Ward said. “I don’t have an entertainment or a clothes budget. My budget is my food. That’s the only place I can cut back.”

The state budget plan would also mean that Oxnard resident Suzi Vogel and her daughters Joyce, 9, and Sara, 3, will have to do with less. Vogel would see her $607-a-month welfare check cut to $577.

“School starts in September, and I don’t see how I’m going to be able to buy any clothes,” said Vogel, 30. “I usually buy new clothes and underwear.”

Currently, there are more than 10,000 county recipients of the state’s Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, said Helen Reburn, the county’s welfare director. The vast majority of those recipients are single mothers with two or three children, she said.

Reburn said the number of welfare recipients has been steadily increasing since 1989, when the recession began. But the number actually dropped slightly in May.

On average, Reburn said, welfare recipients receive a check of about $526 a month, and would lose about $26 under the current budget plan.

“While it doesn’t seem like a large dollar impact, it has thepotential to be very significant because this is the third year that there has been a reduction [in welfare grants],” she said.

Reburn and other officials, however, said welfare recipients whose aid is cut would receive a slight increase in the amount of food stamps they receive from the federal government. The food stamps are allocated based on income.

Supervisor John Flynn, whose district includes Oxnard--with about half of the county’s welfare recipients--said he would prefer to see the state work with counties to reform welfare programs rather than cut benefits.

“These cuts are just going to put a lot of people up against the wall,” he said.

Moreover, Flynn said he objected to the Legislature’s lumping in the blind and disabled with welfare recipients--some of whom, he said, are able to work.

“The blind and disabled should really be separated out,” he said. “These are our clients, the people we serve.”

Another part of the current state budget package would mean a greater financial burden on the county. Legislators are considering adopting one of two proposals that would increase charges to counties for each youth committed to a state detention facility.

One proposal would raise the amount charged to Ventura County from $25 to $150 a month. That would translate into an annual increase of about $100,000 to $300,000 in state charges, said Penny Bohannon, the county’s Sacramento lobbyist.

A second proposal would base state charges on the type of offense committed by a juvenile, she said.

Bohannon said the Legislature is expected to hammer out details on most of the budget proposals today and could adopt a budget by Saturday.