The Assembly and Senate Passed the Two-bill Package in Support of People with Developmental Disabilities
The California State Assembly (MCO = 61-16, DD Funding = unanimous) and the Senate (MCO = the needed 2 Republican votes, DD Funding = unanimous) passed the two-bill package necessary to begin the turn around of the collapse of developmental services. This is a major victory for our community.
We’ve already said Please, sometimes more forcefully than other times. But here’s a real chance to say thank you. If your legislator voted to help save our services and #KeepThePromise of the Lanterman Act, please thank them. Not sure if they did support us? Then ask them, call the office and find out. Or watch the archive of the floor votes and see for yourself or check out The Arc California Twitter feed and see some of the comments of the day. We don’t have many victories in advocacy so let’s take a minute to do this right. Celebrate the moment with your friends and please say thank you to all the legislators who helped. In addition, though the governor hasn’t signed the deal yet (he will because he negotiated the legislation package), make sure to leave a simple thank message to our Secretary of Health and Human Services Diana Dooley (916) 654-3(916) 654-3454 and our Interim DDS Director Mike Wilkening (916) 654-1897(916) 654-1897.
Personal Open Message from the Chair of The Lanterman Coalition to the Active Coalition Members
Thank you to all the Lanterman Coalition organizational representatives, their members, and our local grassroots partners, for your dedicated commitment to the children and adults in California with developmental disabilities. Every organization played some role in the
success of this endeavor. It was impressive to me to see the selfless work of the coalition, sometimes even suspending your organization’s immediate needs for the need of the greater good of our collective developmental disabilities community. As we’ve shown, working in collaboration can be very powerful, and as we’ve experienced difficult at times, but in the end our cause was to important to lose. We all know that we didn’t get everything we asked for and there is plenty more work to do, but for now let’s celebrate this significant moment together, and please except this heartfelt personal thank you, we could not have gotten this far without you.
Tony Anderson
Chair, Lanterman Coalition
Executive Director
The Arc California
Director of the Arc UCP California Collaboration