Recording artist Moby joined state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, on the steps of San Francisco City Hall this afternoon to call on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to restore domestic violence shelter funding that was cut by a line-item veto.
The bill, if signed by Schwarzenegger, will restore $16.3 million in funding that would allow 94 domestic violence shelters and centers throughout the state to stay open.
Yee said that after Schwarzenegger used a line-item veto to cut the funding in July, “programs were being shut down … services were being reduced, families were really in harm’s way.”
The state Assembly voted unanimously last month to restore the funding, and the state Senate added their own unanimous vote on the bill Wednesday to send it back to the governor’s desk.
If the bill is signed, it will reallocate the millions of dollars from the state’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Fund. The money would be repaid from the state’s General Fund within three years.
Moby, who is performing at San Francisco’s Warfield Theatre tonight, has also vowed to donate the proceeds of his three concerts in California on his current tour to the state’s shelters.
Moby said he joined the fight to restore the shelters’ funding after reading about the issue a few weeks ago.
“We live in a complicated, nuanced world with a lot of ambiguity, and to me this just seemed like the least ambiguous thing I’ve encountered in a long time,” he said. “It just seemed wrong.”
Other San Francisco politicians, including Supervisors David Chiu and Eric Mar and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, were also on hand to call on the governor to sign the bill.
“Domestic violence does not discriminate by class, does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity … it touches all of us,” Chiu said.
Moby is donating the concert proceeds to a permanent fund that was established along with the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence.
To donate to the fund, visit the partnership’s Web site, www.cpedv.org.
