AUGUSTA – Cindy Leeman of Bristol believes that proposed cuts in state mental health services could cause her to lose her job and force her family to live “in a cardboard box.”

Leeman said her 12-year-old son’s illness caused the state to place him in a New Hampshire group home with Medicaid’s assistance.

“I could not afford to pay for this on my salary,” she told lawmakers this week. Furthermore, she worried that if he didn’t get these services he might hurt himself or someone else and possibly end up in jail.

Leeman’s story was just one of many offered Thursday to lawmakers during emotional testimony by the mentally handicapped, their guardians and advocates.

They described how cuts proposed by Gov. Angus King to help plug a $248 million state budget deficit would erode the last line of defense for families dependent on community services.

Advocates for the mentally handicapped say the proposed cuts would take away many crucial support systems that keep some mentally ill people from committing suicide, performing crimes or winding up in long-term hospital care.

Especially affected would be those who have never been admitted to Augusta Mental Health Institute. Former AMHI patients get preferential treatment in some circumstances.

The governor’s budget proposal calls for reductions over 2002 and 2003 of $12.2 million in programs administered by the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services, resulting in a loss of $8.3 million in federal funds. At the same time, King has proposed a supplemental appropriations, primarily for services at AMHI and Bangor Mental Health Institute, of $10.6 million.

The proposed service reductions include:

. $1.8 million for children’s services including case management and community support.

. $813,740 for some clients who are not eligible for Medicaid.

. $716,798 for respite care, services and transportation for the mentally retarded.

. $200,000 for social clubs for the mentally ill.

. $150,000 for patients awaiting permanent programs.

. $25,000 for crisis situations.

Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services Commissioner Lynn Duby told members of the Appropriations and the Health and Human Services committees that she had tried to make the cuts in a way that those in the greatest need would get help first.

Several committee members, however, questioned the moral choices behind the plan.

“This is really making me nervous,” said Rep. Julie Ann O’Brien, R-Augusta. “Some of these cuts are crisis services.”

Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, said he found some of the choices unacceptable. He said he’d like Duby, the commissioner of financial services and the governor to reconsider priorities.

Referring to the budget document, Martin said he’d like the governor to “put his signatures on the bottom of these sheets and say that’s what he really wants.”

Several mental health care providers suggested state departments were cutting services by nonprofit agencies without adequately looking for waste in their own operations.

Although the department is planning eliminating five positions, one legislator said he’d heard they were unfilled. A spokeswoman for the department said the five positions to be cut were yet to be identified.

But Joseph Pickering, director of Community Health and Counseling Services, a major provider for the mentally ill and retarded in central and eastern Maine, suggested in testimony and in a separate interview that the state should re-examine itself first.

“The poor and the vulnerable are taking a disproportionate share of the budget cuts and the question we have to ask is why,” he said. “If all these client services cannot be afforded, how can all this state structure be afforded? The purpose of state government should be service- not employment.”

One possibility, Pickering said, would be to merge the Department of Human Services and the Department of Behavioral Services to trim duplicative administrative costs. The treatment of illnesses shouldn’t be divided between physical and mental, he said.

DHS Commissioner Kevin Concannon said in an interview that while there could be some cost savings in such an undertaking, he worried that a single department would have too much power. The two departments individually already dwarf many state agencies, he said.

The impact of one of the proposed cuts would effectively reduce the support staff of the National Association of the Mentally Ill’s Maine chapter by half, according to director Carol Carothers.

She said her organization gets 98 percent of its funding from the state. NAMI has six employees, who oversee 23 individual support groups for the mentally ill and their families.

Rep. Marilyn Canavan, D-Waterville, said she was speaking as a member of a family with a mentally ill person.

“When mental illness happened to us … it was as though our home had been struck by a tornado,” she said. “Mental illness is particularly cruel, because it alienates family members [and others who normally provide support.]”

Canavan explained that the only quality education available to deal with her family’s problems came from NAMI. The organization’s representative explained that her family member’s problem was caused by a biologically based brain disease, she said.

“The alliance taught us it can happen to anyone,” she said. “The Alliance for the Mentally Ill is for family members an emotional lifeline.”