Unkindest cuts in Olympia: Kate's story
While Occupy protesters were in Olympia, the quiet testimony of a disabled woman named Kate put a human face on the drastic cuts the legislature and the governor are contemplating.
When legislators return to Olympia on Jan. 9 they will face a further round of budget cuts totaling $1.5 billion. These cuts will involve real people with real needs. One such person is Kate. She spoke movingly to the House Ways & Means Committee in late November when it heard testimony on the governor’s all-cuts supplemental operating budget. Kate's concern is about further reductions in home care services that would impact dramatically the quality of her life.
So this story is about Kate.
Since the start of the “great recession” in 2008, the legislature has had to reduce its operating budget by $10 billion from “maintenance-of-effort” levels. An additional $2 billion shortfall developed after the budget for the current biennium was adopted last May. This amounts roughly to the 25 percent of the budget that is not “protected” by state constitutional or federal mandates.
Legislators found about $500 million in spending reductions in the December special session in the form of fund transfers, one-time bookkeeping adjustments, and a few minor program cuts. Now numerous programs and services are on the chopping block, including several that were cut previously.
One program area that has seen large cuts during the past three years is in-home personal care. These services have been reduced by $311 million, resulting in more than 46,000 elderly and disabled adults losing up to a quarter of their monthly hours of care. Additionally, providers of home care and community residential services have had their reimbursement rates cut by $50 million. This has limited a provider’s ability to serve clients and caused some to only serve private-pay clients who can afford the care.
Gov. Gregoire’s proposed supplemental budget (the most draconian version, and not likely to be implemented) would make even deeper cuts in these essential programs. It would reduce — or in some cases eliminate — services for people with developmental disabilities or those in long-term care.
The governor has suggested one way out: Ask voters to approve a temporary half percent increase in the state sales tax. If passed next spring, the tax would generate about $500 million annually for each of the next three years. It would allow a “buy-back” of further cuts to higher education, K-12, and public safety programs. And it would prevent 1,600 individuals from losing all personal care and related services, and restore service hours for some of the most vulnerable clients.
The legislative hearing on the budget was on the first day of the “Occupy the Capitol” demonstration. The hearing extended over several hours, beginning in the early afternoon and ending well into the evening. Members of the Ways & Means Committee heard testimony from social advocacy groups, non-profit agencies that contract with the state to deliver a wide range of human and health services, workers who provide those services, and labor organizations that represent the workers.
The committee also heard from service recipients like Kate, who is wheel-chair bound. Kate at first had some difficulty with the microphone, but she told the committee her “story” in a quiet and clear voice in the two minutes allocated.
Kate is a retiree who lives in Sequim where she was a city council member. She has multiple sclerosis and suffers from asthma attacks. Kate said that until last year she had received satisfactory home care services, including help with cooking, cleaning, and personal hygiene.
Then came the budget cuts, and her assistance was reduced. Showers are now once every four days. Without night service, Kate said she has to lie in her own waste “in exquisite pain” awaiting the aid worker’s morning visit. Kate, who has a slight frame, indicated that she has lost seven pounds.
Under the newly proposed cuts, she said she would suffer compounding effects. Her increased health care costs may make it difficult to pay required renters’ insurance. She might loose her housing subsidy that is contingent on having the insurance and being able to keep her apartment in good order. Kate fears she might become homeless.
There were probably others with similar stories to tell the committee. But on that particular day legislators didn’t hear from them because the occupiers delayed the start of the hearings. Many who had signed up to testify on the budget had to leave or miss their transportation home.
No one testifying in favor of funding for social services spoke against funding other essential programs such as higher education or K-12. Not one of the approximately 100 speakers said “fund only us, not the other guy.” In fact, social programs such as Readiness to Learn, which helps students with issues in their home environment, were often cited as necessary complements to effective basic education. The large majority of those testifying said they supported the governor’s “balanced” approach and that the legislature should ask voters for new revenues.
No one from the business community spoke that day. I worry that business interests are more interested in funding education more generously, not by raising taxes but by cutting social services. They need to listen to the Kates of this state, and keep in mind the broader perspectives on funding essential services they advocate.
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Comments:
Posted Wed, Jan 4, 7:57 a.m. Inappropriate
The "all cuts" meme is a lie. Maybe it comes naturally to a former legislator who contributes to the public debate through research and commentary and prefers the Democratic Party.
The Puget Sound Partnership, for example, sees a 10% increase in its budget.
The Department of Natural Resources, for another, sees a 2.3% increase. There are more.
Agencies that advance political (regulatory) agendas are funded. Agencies that - ostensibly - serve broader segments of the taxpaying public... not so much.
Given the author's disinformation, one has to wonder if "Kate" even exists (at least her consequence, as stated).
Posted Wed, Jan 4, 9:09 a.m. Inappropriate
Here is a link to an actual State House Correspondent doing actual reporting. Article title "definition of a state budget cut hard to pin down"; here is a nice take away:
"If all of Gregoire's proposed budget cuts -- including a suggestion to shorten the school year -- are approved by the Legislature, Washington is scheduled to spend about $30 billion in its current general fund budget. That's more than the last budget cycle and about $2.5 billion less than the peak in the 2007-2009 budget, back when federal stimulus dollars helped lawmakers fill in the fiscal gaps.
So when lawmakers talk about a $10.5 billion cut, what they are referring to is cumulative cuts to current and projected spending to pay for programs that -- if revenues had continued as expected -- would be paid for out of a budget of about $38 billion, according to projections by the state's Office of Financial Management."
In other news, Washington State tax revenue is now actually falling. The political crisis is now an actual budget crisis.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9S1HIL00.htm
Posted Wed, Jan 4, 1:37 p.m. Inappropriate
From g's helpful link:
"If you're going to operate on the baseline that the state budget always has to increase on maintenance of service levels, then you're not giving government any incentive to find efficiencies or find new ways to deliver services," said Jason Mercier, director of the Center for Government of the Washington Policy Center, a conservative think tank."
Not to mention studiously avoided alternatives to the perpetual growth necessary for corporatism to pay back perpetual leveraging.
Nor the retrograde aggregation of people into numbers, all viewed expendable, surplus, cannon fodder, etc. by those claiming and defending the right to abstract all but themselves.
Removing these shackles takes unbelievable courage, knowledge and insight. South America's peoples, the first to be conned, may well have acquired the knowledge and insight to make "sustainable" more than double-talk. Nothing here yet.
Posted Wed, Jan 4, 5:23 p.m. Inappropriate
Mr Nelson, perhaps you can address BlueLight's points. Why are you being dishonest with the good readers of Crosscut by referring to "cuts" when spending is, in fact, going up?
Posted Wed, Jan 4, 9:30 p.m. Inappropriate
PJS: Spending in fact is not going up. I refer you to the governor's supplemental operating budget which would cut $2 billion from the biennial operating budget that the legislature adopted last May in order to match spending with declining revenues. See:
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget12/default.asp
Posted Wed, Jan 4, 10:11 p.m. Inappropriate
The program that provides my developmentally disabled daughter with housing, Medicaid, and employment training must cut about half the people under the Governor's budget. She's among that half. She will lose her housing, her Medicaid, and all other services. She cannot live on her own and will have to come back to my house, where I will receive nothing for helping her. I could die or be disabled myself tomorrow, and she would literally become homeless.
PJS and BlueLight, would you say that spending is "going up" for her?
Posted Thu, Jan 5, 11:31 a.m. Inappropriate
Dick and Sarah, I referenced two agencies that - in fact - have their budgets increased under the Governor's proposed budget. There are more.
Sarah, your beef is not with me for pointing that truth out. Your beef should be with 1) a state government that takes care of its "environmental" (and other) campaign contributors more than its most vulnerable citizens and 2) "journalists" who have allowed that to happen by feeding you misinformation (like the "all cuts" meme mentioned earlier).
Posted Thu, Jan 5, 6:16 p.m. Inappropriate
The other bit left out of this piece is that the number of people in the state has increased over that last 10 years, that's part of why the cost for administering social programs has increased, there more people who need those services. The increase in people should have also generated more tax revenue.
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/news/release/2011/110223.asp
It's easy to say, cut in home care by 20% but leaving people to lie in their own excrement is unconscionable.
Posted Thu, Jan 5, 6:24 p.m. Inappropriate
"...there more people who need those services. The increase in people should have also generated more tax revenue."
That's the strategy, Gary. Show/create/import more people in "need".
Posted Sat, Jan 7, 11:40 p.m. Inappropriate
BlueLight, I've lived in this state for over 40 years now. My daughter was not "imported"; she was born here. My "beef" is not with journalists, because I'm intelligent and knowledgeable enough to figure out who's telling me facts and who isn't. My beef is with people like you who insist that anything that government does is somehow shady, incorrect, or downright criminal. My beef is with you who tell people who have lived a life that you know nothing about that they are wrong, and even go so far as to claim that the people they care about don't exist. That's unconscionable.
Posted Mon, Jan 9, 4:09 p.m. Inappropriate
Belated kudos to Crosscut for publishing this portrait of the Third World nation we've become, kudos also for publishing the commentary by those de facto Nazis who declare themselves such by their responses to disabled people.
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