Sacramento trauma center loses funding as Prop. 36 shifts dollars
After Oakland resident James Michael was released from the hospital following a gunshot wound in 2024, he said he was in a “dark, dark place.”
His friends weren’t saying the right things, and seeing his family hurting made him guilty that he’d gotten everyone into the situation. The 18 year-old had been shot in the leg by accident at the after-party of an event he’d hosted, and was getting around with a walker.
“After I got back home, somebody reached out, came by, asked my mom if he could come talk to me and tell me about the therapist,” Michael said. He said he didn’t want to meet with a therapist at first, that it took some coaxing, but that when he did, things turned around for him.
Dr. Michelle Ornelas Knight, the director of the UC Davis Health Trauma Recovery Center, said that’s what trauma centers do — “relentless outreach” she calls it — to get people connected to emotional support following times of crisis.
But trauma centers like Ornelas Knight’s are facing tough times. Her center, located on the UC Davis Health campus in Sacramento, is one of five established trauma recovery centers that weren’t funded by California this year. She said it’s because the pot of money they pull from has been eroded by the passage of Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure that voters approved in 2024.
Meanwhile, the center is looking for other grants and joining calls for the state to provide immediate bridge funding in this year’s budget.
“We’re trying to link services to all the patients that we have, and then for those that we’re not able to, we’re not going to abandon them,” Ornelas Knight said. “We’re going to continue to provide work if it has to be pro bono.”
Advocates attribute cuts to Prop. 36
In 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47. It reduced penalties for drug possession for personal use and for theft of items under $950, and directed the savings from incarcerating fewer people to social services, including trauma recovery centers.
However, law enforcement, including a cohort of influential district attorneys, argued Prop. 47 had scaled things back too much, and was enabling drug users and repeat shoplifters. They fought for Proposition 36 in 2024, to reverse some of the Prop. 47 changes and impose harsher penalties on repeat offenders. California residents approved it with more than 68% of the vote.
Gov. Gavin Newsom was against Prop. 36 and allocated a fraction of the money advocates wanted to implement the measure last year. In creating this year’s budget, Newsom’s Department of Finance did an analysis of how much additional incarcerations under Prop. 36 were cutting into Prop. 47 savings — savings that amounted to around $95 million in the 2023-2024 budget year. It estimated the additional incarcerations would decrease the savings by 14% in 2025-2026 and 23% the year after, draining the supply by tens of millions of dollars.
That means less money for trauma recovery centers, which get 10% of the savings. The centers are also smarting from the expiration of $23 million in general fund dollars that were approved in 2022, according to Janelle Melohn with the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers.
The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office said in a February report that they believe the Department of Finance is overstating the impact of Prop. 36 on Prop. 47 funding. It encouraged the department to address a methodological error in their May Revision, which is expected next week.
Melohn said in an email, in addition to the center at UC Davis Health, the Alameda County Family Justice Center in Oakland, Cirtus Counseling Services Trauma Recovery Center in Redlands, Miracles Counseling Trauma Recovery Center in Gardena and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck Trauma Recovery Center in Los Angeles were also not granted funding for the next two years.
The alliance is calling on the state’s leaders to allocate $34 million for each of the next two years to tide the centers over, and for a long-term solution to be identified.
Meanwhile, advocates say the program shouldn’t just be preserved, but expanded in the interest of public safety.
“There should be a trauma recovery center in every community,” said Tinisch Hollins of Californians for Safety and Justice during an advocacy event Tuesday. “Trauma is underrated as a driver of crime, and it can be interrupted.”
