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Advocates for Homeless Push for Budget Funding

Advocates for statewide programs that help the homeless with mental health problems are criticizing the Governor's move to eliminate key services. Schwarzenegger's revised budget, released this week,

Advocates for statewide programs that help the homeless with mental health problems are criticizing the Governor's move to eliminate key services. Schwarzenegger's revised budget, released this week, did not include funding for a $55 million program. State Senator Darrell Steinberg wrote the legislation that funds county programs that help the mentally ill with housing, counseling and treatment.

Steinberg: We have a program which gets results and instead of cutting it to nothing we ought to be celebrating it and we ought to be doing everything we can as a legislature, as an advocacy community as a public to say that mental health matters.

Administration officials say there's lots of money coming in for mental health programs through Proposition 63 . That measure was approved by voters in 2004 to expand mental health services. But Steinberg says those funds can only go for new programs, not existing ones.   A spokesman for the Governor says Schwarzenegger has a record of supporting California's mentally ill and homeless, creating an Initiative to End Long Term Homelessness .