Lawmakers joined with advocates this past week to decry what they characterize as massive federal budget cuts that will hurt Utah's most vulnerable populations — the low-income, the elderly and children.

"This hurts the neediest of the needy," said Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini.

Seghini was joined by West Jordan Mayor Bryan Holladay; Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, co-chairman of the Legislature's Executive Appropriations committee; and Sen. Pete Knudson, R-Brigham City, at a press conference called Thursday by Utah Issues.

Aside from deep cuts to Medicaid and federal affordable housing funds, President Bush's budget proposal unveiled this past week also termed many programs as "ineffective," including Community Development Block Grants.

The fear is that the program will not only sustain a $1.3 billion cut across the board but have new restrictions put on how the money is spent.

Such a cut, Seghini and Holladay warned, would be devastating for community efforts to help the most needy.

In Midvale, 34 percent of the population of 27,000 meet the poverty requirement imposed by CDBG requirements.

The grant money has been used to fund after-school programs for latchkey children, help the elderly and people with disabilities with home repairs, parenting classes and a 24-hour crisis day care for potentially abused children, Seghini said.

"These cuts will hurt the people who can least stand to have something removed from their tool kit for survival."

Lynn Samsel, director of the Lifecare Bank, said Midvale was one of many cities in the valley to funnel CDBG money to its efforts, which helped 3,000 seniors stay in their homes and remain independent.

"The typical senior we serve is a woman in her mid-70s, a widow, with some sort of disability, limited or no contact with family and someone who needs some extra help to remain in her home," he said.

He said without such services as home repairs and delivered food boxes, seniors would more than likely be forced to move into a nursing home and go on Medicaid, which he said is at cross-purposes from what the president is trying to do to reduce expenditures.

CDBG monies also help cities repair aging infrastructure in low-income areas, such as last year's replacement of sidewalks in Midvale that were installed as a Works Projects Administration job during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, Seghini said.

Both Bigelow and Knudson said it isn't unusual for the federal government to craft a program, commit a certain amount of money and then steadily withdraw its funding support — but that doesn't make it fair.

"If they truly believe" in what they are doing, Bigelow stressed, then those people instituting the cuts should be willing to face the public and their constituency, rather than leaving the job to the states.

"It is not the right thing to do," Bigelow said.

Gordon Walker, head of the state's Division of Housing and Community Development, said federal affordable housing programs are slated to be cut by 12 percent — reduced funding that will place additional strain on efforts to get the homeless into homes.

"If this is being sold as an anti-deficit budget, the dollars cut will not even be seen in the deficit, but they will be seen in the lives of people."

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E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com