PROVIDENCE — Lawmakers yesterday listened, once again, to dozens of voices saying a proposal to cut funding for state services to youths “just doesn’t make any sense,” in the words of Michael B. Forte, an associate justice of the Rhode Island Family Court.

Forte testified on the proposal to end Family Court jurisdiction at age 18, meaning Family Court judges could no longer sentence youths to remain at the state Training School for Youth, or under the supervision of Family Court, past their 18th birthday for crimes they committed before turning 18. Family Court sentences can currently continue through age 21.

The proposal comes as part of a plan to balance the budget for the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, and as part of a larger effort to stave off a state deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ending Family Court jurisdiction at age 18 would affect 79 youths currently at the Training School, according to House fiscal analysts.

Those youths are at the Training School for offenses including felony assault, first-degree sexual assault, first-degree child molestation, conspiracy to commit murder, possessing a firearm, and possessing cocaine with intent to deliver. (The list also includes some youths who committed less serious offenses considered misdemeanors in the adult system.)

Judge Forte said the change would force the state to try more juveniles as adults, because otherwise, the state would be required to release them the day they turn 18, even if they were sent to the Training School for serious offenses committed shortly before their 18th birthdays. Trial as an adult is mandatory in Rhode Island for offenses punishable by life in prison; it is an option in any case in which a child is accused of an offense state law deems a felony. If the proposed change comes to pass, “we’ll definitely have to use that discretion more,” Forte said.

Incarcerating someone at the Adult Correctional Institutions — at an average cost of $39,000 a year — is less expensive than housing someone at the Training School, which costs $98,000 a year, on average.

But there is a world of difference between the ACI and the Training School, Forte and DCYF Director Patricia Martinez said. For one thing, the Training School provides services including education and substance-abuse treatment. But most importantly, Forte said, “it’s a rehabilitative milieu rather than a punishment milieu.”

To send 16- and 17-year-olds to the ACI is to set them up for a lifetime of criminality, Forte said. “This is really a disaster in the making,” he said.

Three states — Connecticut, New York and North Carolina — try juveniles as adults for any offense committed after they turn 16, according to the House analysis. Nine more states start adult court jurisdiction for all criminal offenses at age 17: Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.

Yesterday’s hearing in the House Finance Committee spanned three hours before the day’s House session, and continued for another hour afterward. Witnesses waiting to testify clogged the hallway outside the committee room, some sitting on the floor. A crowd gathered upstairs in the Bell Room to watch a simulcast of what was transpiring in the packed-to-capacity hearing room.

Possible changes to the juvenile justice system were just one among many topics that drew ire from the public. Proposed cuts to services for former foster children and developmentally disabled youths have also been immensely unpopular.

Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino has asked Martinez to come back with alternatives for balancing the budget without the same service cuts.

The committee grilled the governor’s department heads yesterday about apparent discrepancies that may throw the budget even further out of balance and force lawmakers to find even more money.

“It is concerning to me that a lot of these proposals were not vetted out,” Costantino, D-Providence, said in an interview afterward. “It seems like a lot of that process is taking place now, which is extremely late in the budget process.”

Costantino wondered whether the administration had submitted an unrealistic budget proposal that sets the stage for a supplemental increase next year, when it turns out the amount appropriated won’t cover expenses.

Jane A. Hayward, state director of Health and Human Services, offered assurances that isn’t the case.

She said the focus this year is on systemic change, rather than one-time fixes, but because that requires some reorganization of programs and functions between departments, “it’s not as clean as what we would normally see.” But, she said, “there’s no fuzzy math going on here. I think we have difficult math because we have such a substantial deficit.”

egudrais@projo.com