Senator George Runner
Serving the 17th District which incorporates portions of the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura and Kern counties.

On Monday, I had the pleasure to sit down with one of my local papers, the Antelope Valley Press, to discuss California's state budget (which, as everyone knows is stalled in negotiations because the Democrat leaders are at odds with one another).

My discussion with the AVP Ed Board resulted in this story where my message is simple: It's time for California to seriously reset state spending levels.

We also discussed the wonderfully conservative governance by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has unflinchingly taken on the school and state unions and in so doing brought fiscal sanity to a once broken state. California leaders have much to learn from Christie.

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Fraud Screening Roots out Fraud in In-Home Support Services Program

A year ago, Legislative Republicans joined the Governor in creating reforms to root out fraud in the In-Home Support Services (IHSS) program.

The measures that were negotiated into the final agreement of the 2009-10 budget - including background checks and fingerprinting for providers and recipients, unannounced home visits - were intended to eliminate rampant abuses of the system that had been documented through several county grand jury investigations.

As this Inland Valley Daily Bulletin article illustrates, these reforms have created the intended effect of better maximizing taxpayers' dollars - preserving services for the needy, and ending them for the greedy.

New state screening procedures this year have led to thousands of people withdrawing as in-home care providers for the elderly and disabled, leading state officials to suspect that fraud and abuse has been rampant in the program.

The article also states that "last week, a state-county task force battling IHSS fraud arrested 14 people, charging them with theft of more than $500,000 in taxpayer-funded aid programs.

"In one case, a mother signed up as an 'authorized representative' to receive IHSS funds for her son, who has been in custody for more than four years for murder, prosecutors said."