April 18, 2011; Source: Contra Costa Times | The San Jose Mercury News has found nonprofits and city administrators sighing in relief.

The cuts in the Community Development Block Grant and the Community Services Block Grant programs were not as bad as might have emerged from either the proposals of the White House or the House of Representatives. The President had proposed a 7.5 percent CDBG cut and a 44 percent CSBG cut for FY2011 and the House had aimed at chopping 62 percent out of CDBG. In the end, the budget agreement sliced 16 percent from CDBG and only 3 percent from CSBG.

Good news? Contra Costa County's CDBG program will drop from $3.3 million to only $3.1 million, the Merc cited nonprofits such as the Adult Interim Housing Program and the Monument Crisis Center, both safety net nonprofits, that will lose the most money in Concord, Calif.'s shrunken CDBG program.

In Walnut Creek, where the CDBG program will drop from $342,000 this year to $287,000, the expectation is that housing groups will be among those absorbing the brunt of the cuts. Maybe they were sighing not from relief, but from exhaustion. Leaving aside the fact that the proposed gouging of the President's FY2012 budget proposals will provoke a battle royale to be preceded by another attempt to cut the FY2011 budget when Congress faces raising the nation's debt ceiling, was the FY2011 budget deal reached by President Obama, House Speaker Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Reid a devastating blow to nonprofits, not quite as bad as you feared or expected, or a relative success all things being equal? – Rick Cohen