By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Facing what looks like a $5.5 billion deficit in the upcoming biennium, with revenue forecasts expected to increase that estimate, social service agencies across the state that receive government funding are holding their breath for what could be a bloodbath. Given the state’s constitutional requirement to fund education and Gov. Christine Gregoire’s proposed budget cuts to many of the people who most need assistance, Jewish organizations and nonprofits throughout the state that provide these services will undoubtedly feel the pain.
Based on an analysis by Remy Trupin of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center think tank, “all the programs that are for poor people” and that serve people in any kind of need, aside from education, have been slashed by 28 percent.
Trupin, along with Jewish legislators Sen. Adam Kline (D–S. Seattle) and Rep. Roger Goodman (D–Kirkland) and the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle’s government affairs director Zach Carstensen, addressed a group of Jewish community members and social service advocates at a lunchtime event on Wednesday.
“From my perspective, the hardest thing is going to be how we’re able to reconcile the budget deficit with the needs that are out there and growing,” Carstensen told JTNews prior to the event. “When the economy is in trouble like it is now, that’s when the demand for services increases, and at the same time as the economy is in a freefall it also means our revenue is declining.”
When the legislature goes into session Monday, both chambers will need to come up with their versions of the budget and hammer out compromises that organization leaders hope will look more favorably at their own service delivery.
Much of what Carstensen called the “communal safety net” depends on partnership with the state government, as donations to the agencies can’t sustain what they need to provide their services.
“We are concerned about the full spectrum of human services,” he said.
In particular, items of concern are reimbursement rates of long-term care, which would affect the Caroline Kline Galland nursing facility, and the General Assistance Unemployable program that provides a small stipend for homeless or disabled people who are unable to work.
“That program has essentially been eliminated in the governor’s budget, and that is a critical support for a number of clients that [Jewish Family Service] serves and synagogues that have homeless shelters that are active in providing services to the homeless community,” Carstensen said.
Claudia Berman, associate director of Jewish Family Service, said the GA-U cut was one of her agency’s biggest concerns, though it was also worried about possible cuts in refugee services and domestic violence funding. The governor’s budget essentially left those two areas alone.
“We have, more than ever, concerns about what that means for our clients,” Berman said. “We’re going to have a long road ahead of us.”
The governor’s budget would cut Medicaid payments to nursing homes by as much as 5 percent. That, according to Jeff Cohn, CEO of Kline Galland, could make providing their services very difficult.
“Currently, approximately half of our residents are on Medicaid, and our costs go up no matter what the state reimburses,” Cohn said.
Because the state has stiff competition among nursing staff, salary increases of 3 to 4 percent each year would be more like an 8 percent cut, he said. In the event that Kline Galland does receive a drop in its Medicaid payments, it would likely have to make personnel and purchasing cuts as well as go to the community for donations, Cohn said.
For residents that pay privately, he noted, with the recent drop in the stock market it’s a “double whammy.”
“It’s an additional hit on our residents,” he said. “Our private pay residents have already had resources diminished because of the stock market, and so here a lot more people are going to be in need of Medicaid services at the same time [the state is] cutting those services.”
Medicaid makes up the bulk of the Kline Galland’s revenues, Cohn said.
Pamela Center of the Puget Sound Jewish Coalition on Homelessness wrote in a letter to supporters of her organization of her concern for the GA-U cut as well as a 50 percent cut in the state’s housing trust fund, which builds affordable housing for low-income families.
“Think about your neighbor who has to choose between going to the doctor and paying rent,” she wrote. “Think about the families and individuals sleeping on the street throughout our state because there is not enough shelter or housing that they can afford.”
Despite the housing trust fund cut, Gregoire did include a 3 percent increase for the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
“There are things like that where [Gov. Gregoire] and her staff were able to make the calculation that if we went too far this is just going to compound the recession we’re in,” Carstensen said.
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s interim director Hilary Bernstein, that organization will, despite ever-tightening education budgets, push to renew contracts for its anti-bias education in public schools. It had previously received $325,000 from the state to run training sessions in several school districts across the state.
“We have to bring issues in front of the legislators for them to recognize the importance,” Bernstein said. “What they realized in the past was that putting dollars toward students’ test performance is important. If you…do that without also putting dollars to making sure school environments are safe and inclusive for all students, then it’s hard to see an improvement in students’ test scores.”
Rep. Goodman suggested three scenarios given the current budget circumstances: One — the most likely scenario — that creates what he called “a slash-and-burn budget that everybody hates,” that would talk about taxes, though not necessarily create or raise any.
“We have to illustrate to the people how bad it really is,” he said.
The second scenario would be even more bare bones, he said, while the third would come up with ways to increase revenue — meaning raising taxes, though he sees that option as unlikely.
“I don’t think the legislature has the nerve to do it,” he said.
Sen. Kline said that this year could be ground zero in how the state’s citizens will understand the gravity of the budget situation.
“The brutality of the cuts is not yet clear to the public,” he said. “There are some people I believe will die because of cuts in health care in the budget.”
Lawmakers, he said, will have to “be dispassionate to almost a pathological degree” in killing what may have been their pet programs in earlier years.
But, Kline added, these cuts could cause people to make the connection between the cost of “free” services such as roads and police and where their tax dollars go.
“That’s a teachable moment,” he said.
Kline also noted that this year’s session could be the one that talks about a serious overhaul of the state’s tax system.
The Seattle section of the National Council of Jewish Women regularly works with broad-based coalitions on various causes, and this year will be no different, according to executive director Lauren Simonds. Most of the proposed legislation her organization plans to throw its support behind is not fiscally based, she said.
Among that legislation includes a bill that would cap interest rates so-called payday loans at 36 percent, which had previously stalled in the House. Other legislation would close a loophole in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that allows third-party companies to sell customer information purchased from pharmacies to pharmaceutical companies.
Additional bills NCJW plans to support include legislation that would equalize the playing field, literally, at parks and sport arenas for girls and women; seek further domestic partnership rights and marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples; and legislation that would allow victims of sexual assault by their landlords, including family members, to break their leases without consequence.
A sex education bill likely to be put forth would require that Washington State “pursue only federal sexual health and education funding that is consistent with the Healthy Youth Act,” Simonds said. The Healthy Youth Act was signed by Gov. Gregoire in 2007 and states that sex education must be medically and scientifically accurate, but the bill conflicts with a federal abstinence-only mandate.
Finally, entering the fiscal arena, NCJW will support an effort to turn back the governor’s cut of 40 nurses that provide services and birth control for low-income women. That effort, according to the NARAL Pro-Choice Washington organization, cuts $1.26 million from the budget, but it brings in nearly $9 million in federal leveraged funds.
Despite the bad news coming down the line, even the people whose organizations stand to be hurt by cuts see a silver lining.
“I’m pretty optimistic that we’ll be able to come up with solutions that work not just for the state of Washington, but work for the nonprofit community [and] our Jewish communal organizations,” Carstensen said. “There’s an opportunity for our entire community to come together.”
JFS’ Berman agreed, and suggested direct action.
“Anybody who’s interested in advocacy, this is the time,” she said.