California crime victims’ groups are pressing state lawmakers to restore funding. Here’s why
California crime victims groups and state lawmakers are pushing for $200 million in ongoing funding amid fears of impending deep federal funding cuts for victims’ services.
Dozens of organizations across California including Sacramento’s WEAVE and Sacramento LGBT Community Center, Yolo County’s Empower Yolo and Stand Up Placer in Placer County have signed on to a letter urging lawmakers to approve the funds to counteract an anticipated $700 million in cuts to the federal Victims of Crime Act fund.
“VOCA is at the center of California’s response to supporting victims of crime,” said Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes, D-Colton, in a March letter to assembly budget committee chair Jesse Gabriel, D-Encino, and subcommittee chair James Ramos, D-San Bernardino.
“Without some level of support,” Reyes wrote, “California’s victim service providers are at risk of devastating funding cuts that in some instances may require programs to close their doors all together.”
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More than 20 lawmakers — including local state assemblymembers Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, Stephanie Nguyen, D-Elk Grove, and James Gallagher, R-Yuba City — attached their names to Reyes’ letter.
The 40-year-old Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA, established a fund for crime victims financed by fines and penalties from convictions in federal cases, not from tax dollars.
The fund’s balance was more than $1.4 billion as of March, according to the Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime. But some $700 million could be eliminated, Reyes said, paring the pool by half.
The cuts are not expected until the 2024-25 fiscal year, advocates say, but the organizations say the loss of funding could devastate services they provide to victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, elder abuse and more.
Jonathan Raven, assistant CEO of the California District Attorneys Association and former Yolo County chief deputy district attorney, called the potential federal cuts “catastrophic” to nonprofits and to victims’ services, many of which are embedded with county prosecutors as at Yolo and Sacramento County District Attorney’s offices.
Local district attorney’s offices are “already figuring out how they’re going to survive this. The impact will be felt by the victims and survivors of violent crime,” Raven said. In Yolo County, he said, victim services workers are “underpaid and overworked.”
“Imagine the vicarious stress and trauma in working with people at the lowest point in their lives and now staffing is going to have to be cut,” Raven continued. “It’s shameful.”
Reyes has called for the millions in state funding “to prevent immediate and drastic cuts to crime victim services and provide time for a longer-term solution at the state or federal level.”
Legislation that could address funding stalls
Both Reyes and Gabriel have crime victims funding bills before the state legislature.
Reyes’ Assembly Bill 1956, the Crime Victim Services Stabilization Act, would require state supplemental funding when the federal VOCA award is reduced more than 10% than the amount awarded the prior year, and require the California Office of Emergency Services to award these funds to federal VOCA funding grant recipients, simplifying the grant process for service providers.
AB 2432, carried by Gabriel, would fund victim services by “holding bad corporate actors accountable for financial and legal wrongdoing.”
The bill would create a “new and permanent” funding source for programs historically funded by federal Victims of Crime Act funds.
