Advocates for mentally retarded adults found a reason to celebrate in Gov. Ed Rendell's budget proposal last week.

They will be keeping their fingers crossed for the next four months, hoping the numbers hold.

The governor's proposed 2006-07 budget includes an additional $78.5 million for community mental retardation services, a 10 percent increase over last year.

Some of the additional funding would be used to cover the increasing cost of existing services, and $27 million would be used to cut down on the waiting lists of people who need help.

There's money to provide placements for 204 people who need group homes and money for a program called life sharing, in which families take in mentally retarded adults, much as they would take in children who need homes, and get paid a fee for that person's expenses.

Kevin Casey, the deputy secretary of the Office of Mental Retardation in the state's Department of Public Welfare, said the money that has been set aside to care for people who are still on the waiting lists will cover about six months of services because it will take time to get services up and running and the people into the services.

The $27 million will also be matched by the federal government for an actual outlay over the year of about $54 million. Under the proposal, the state and federal governments would also then spend an additional $54 million in the 2008-09 budget, when the people receiving the services would be funded for the entire year, Mr. Casey said.

"The history of the program is that money doesn't get yanked back out once you have put it in," he said. He said the budget "presupposes increases" for the following year.

More than 3,800 people classified as mentally retarded are on the emergency waiting list for services.

"This is the biggest waiting list initiative ever," Mr. Casey said. "We know there are a lot of families who are really, really desperate."

A report from the state Department of Public Welfare showed that as of Dec. 1, there were 697 people waiting for housing -- about 100 of them from Allegheny County-- far more than the 204 who would be covered by the additional funds.

Donald J. Clark, the deputy director of Allegheny County's Office of Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, said the group home spots will go to the people who need them most urgently, no matter where they live, instead of being parceled out equally to each of the state's 67 counties.

Mr. Clark said Mr. Rendell's budget proposal is the best he has seen in the last decade, in that it has "really tried to deal with the waiting list."

Marsha Blanco, the executive director of South Side-based Achieva, which provides services to people with developmental disabilities, said it was a good budget proposal.

"Hopefully we're going to be able to bring a lot of people who are in crisis to safe landings in some respects," she said. "It's a very promising budget proposal for people with developmental disabilities and their families."

Steve Suroviec, the executive director of ARC of Pennsylvania, which lobbies for services for the developmentally disabled said he was pleased that money is being spent on the life-sharing services and on bringing people in to help the developmentally disabled stay in their own homes.

"It's probably the largest budget we've had in a number of years," Mr. Suroviec said. "On the other hand, it's been a long time coming and the waiting list has been growing."

He said for years the costs of providing services to developmentally disabled people have been going up, but the public money, which pays the bulk of the providers bills, hasn't kept up.

Now, he said, the budget has to be adopted by the Legislature.

Ms. Blanco said advocates for the developmentally disabled spent the last week celebrating the proposal, but next week they will get to work to make sure it gets passed by the Legislature.