About 100 people marched through downtown Medford Tuesday protesting state budget cuts that reduced services for hundreds of people with disabilities in Southern Oregon.

Under threatening skies they walked from Alba Park to the Disabled Services Office on Sixth Street. Many carried banners and chanted slogans to focus attention on people who have lost state support for medicines as well as the in-home caregivers who help them accomplish the ordinary activities of daily living.

About 1,700 people in Jackson and Josephine counties lost benefits in February 2003 when the state reduced funding for long-term care. More recently, others have had their benefits scaled back as case workers use newly developed, more restrictive guidelines to determine who qualifies for assistance.

Some 10,500 people in the two counties still receive varying levels of assistance for medical conditions and disabilities. Several who came to the rally said the plight of disabled people remains largely unrecognized because many of them are too proud or shy to talk openly about themselves.

"I used to feel like I was all alone," said Connie Bond, 47, of Ashland.

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"Now I’m meeting other people," added Bond, who had a stroke 10 years ago. "Now we’re coming together."

Others spoke of their fears of losing the state assistance that keeps them alive.

"If they cut me off, I’d be dead," said Katrina Laurent of Central Point. "It’s just a matter of time. Medicines are something I have to take. I can’t go without them."

Laurent, 43, uses a wheelchair and takes medicines for cerebral palsy, arthritis, osteoporosis, asthma and epilepsy. She was scheduled to lose her benefits last fall when a caseworker re- evaluated her condition. She won an appeal and kept her assistance, but she lives with the anxiety that she could lose her benefits the next time she is evaluated.

"I get by and I get by pretty well," she said, "but I need some help."

Rally organizers presented a list of 10 "basic demands" to Don Bruland, who supervises senior and disabled services locally for the Rogue Valley Council of Governments. The petition seeks restoration of disabled services to levels that existed before the cuts of 2003, along with restoration of Oregon Health Plan benefits for thousands of people who lost those services during the past two years.

In a telephone interview after the rally, Rep. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, said those service cuts are the real source of "surplus" funds that the Department of Human Services announced in early April.

"We didn’t ‘find’ any money," Bates said. "We took 90,000 people off the Oregon Health Plan and cut back benefits to seniors and disabled people. When you do that, that’s where you get your money."

Rally organizers also want to meet with state DHS managers to make them understand the real human effects of their rules and policies.

"You can equate the money we’ve ‘saved’ to the misery we’re seeing," said Jim Sims, a legal aid attorney who helped organize the rally.

Bruland said he would forward the request for a meeting to DHS headquarters in Salem.

Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail bkettler@mailtribune.com