3/3/05
Policy makers must make some major human services decisions
The question is being asked if the less fortunate in Minnesota are bearing too heavy a burden to avoid a state tax increase?
During the 2003-04 budget year, the human services budget was cut by over a billion dollars. Governor Tim Pawlenty in his budget for next biennium is recommending a reduction of $270 million by making 26,700 adults without children ineligible for medical assistance.
When asked who will help pay for the medical costs, legislators respond that Wisconsin and other neighboring states, are cutting back more than Minnesota. That answer dodges the issue of more poor, disabled and mentally impaired people in Minnesota doing with fewer services, supervised by too few in the first and second tier counties.
Moreover, legislators respond that the governorís budget is recommending a 5.8 percent increase in overall state spending during the next two years.
Conservative Republicans who are in control of the House and the governorship, contend this state cannot afford to raise taxes in what they already contend is a highly taxed state. Compared to neighboring states, they say Minnesota provides more services to the poor.
Where, some ask, is the outcry and the outrage from those poor and disabled people in Minnesota who are losing services? They just accept them and try to cope. Voices advocating for the poor are not loud enough.
Anoka County is a good example of where the poor, the disabled and mentally handicapped are losing programs and are getting fewer and slower services for the remaining programs. The county service, one must understand, mostly administers state programs.
When the human services revenues were cut by $8 million in Anoka County, the result was not filling 70 positions, privatizing a program for disabled adults to save $700,000 and cutting back on the number of youth who got summer jobs under the Minnesota Youth Program. The Governor is proposing to eliminate that program entirely.
Hard hit are people who need assistance to pay for child care. More kids are staying alone in their homes after school. In Anoka County, 100 families lost that help because the state raised the eligibility limits and another 90 couldnít afford to pay the increase in co-payments. In 2004, a total of 250 were not eligible for help in paying for child care because income limits changed.
Each year Anoka County adds 100 more developmentally disabled to program with no new staff to help them.
Dakota County Human Services has reduced services to the less fortunate. During the last biennium, it lost $5 million in state aid, resulting in less help for people needing child care and help to build houses. Affordable housing is the biggest need in the county. Dakota County did not make up for that loss in state aid by increasing property taxes.
In Anoka County, however, property taxes have been increased to maintain certain human services. Of the $106,445,000 million budget for human services in 2003, $33,338,000 came from property taxes compared to this yearís budget of $103,530,000 which is supported by property taxes of $36,543,000.
Whether in corrections, mental health, medical assistance, health or child care, counties are doing more with less staff.
The key question is looming. How much service should counties provide to the poor, the mentally handicapped and disabled than what is mandated by the state? And the question needs to be asked who should care for people who are poor, who are disabled, who are jobless, who need help paying child care, who need supervision in corrections? If not the state, who? And how should services be provided? These are heady questions for policy makers if they continue to go down the no-state taxation road. -- Don Heinzman
HometownSource.com
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