By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D–36th) had one word for this legislative session as he prepared for its opening: Sober.
“There’s a real sense of sobriety and real humility about the scale of the challenge we face,” Carlyle, a member of the state’s Jewish delegation, told JTNews the Friday before the Washington State legislature began its annual session on Jan. 10. “The fundamental systems issue we face is that in very difficult times, the demand on public service skyrockets at the very moment the perfect storm kicks in with a dramatic drop in revenues.”
Zach Carstensen, director of government affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, who lobbies on behalf of the state’s Jewish nonprofit organizations, said legislators will be “wrestling with how to make decisions that they personally find unconscionable, but because there are few options left are going to have to be made.”
The state’s government faces yet another revenue shortfall — this one to the tune of about $4.6 billion over the next two years — and legislators and nonprofits agencies expect yet another round of debilitating cuts. Gov. Christine Gregoire’s preliminary budget guts many of the social welfare programs for the state’s most indigent citizens.
“The safety net will be stretched thin in some places and eliminated entirely in other places,” Gregoire wrote in a statement after releasing her budget in December. “For the functions that government no longer will be able to provide, we must turn to neighbors, private charities, faith-based organizations and other local programs. Our communities, more than ever, will be asked to step up.”
Ken Weinberg, CEO of Jewish Family Service of Greater Seattle, said his organization has managed to provide for increased demand for emergency services such as food and financial assistance thus far, but stepping up means people will come seeking services JFS cannot offer.
“We don’t have the capacity to provide a health care program for every indigent that exists in the greater Seattle community. That’s simply not possible,” Weinberg said. “I expect that there will be large numbers of people who will really be in very, very, very serious condition that we will not be able to assist the way the need assistance, because you need a state. You need a state that makes a commitment to them.”
As was reported in JTNews on Dec. 24, 2010, JFS faces elimination of more than $450,000 in state funds for the Limited English Proficiency Pathway employment assistance program at its Refugee and Immigrant Service Centers. Weinberg said he also sees JFS’s emergency services program, which offers financial assistance for medical, dental, mental health, food, housing and utilities, being heavily affected.
“My feeling is that we’re going to see a lot more people attempting to access that program and needing a lot more,” Weinberg said.
The numbers bear that out already, with more clients utilizing the food bank this past fall than at any time in JFS’s history. Weinberg also expects to see many more clients who are unable to work who live off small stipends known as Disability Lifeline. Those temporary monthly stipends, which last until clients can transition to federally funded permanent disability, would be sharply reduced in the governor’s budget. That program had, in past years, been rescued while the system was made more efficient. Recipients were able to cobble the payments and other sources together to survive. But not this time, Weinberg believes.
“I think they will be able coming to us for [assistance], and I think we’ll also be seeing an increase, because the mental health system of the state will be taking major hits,” he said.
Carstensen said he will also be keeping an eye on the state’s capital budget, which was defunded by the governor but has JFS’s new expansion facility as one of its priority projects.
The Kline Galland Jewish nursing facility also expects to see between $350,000 and $500,000 cut from the state’s Medicaid reimbursements for lower-income residents.
“That’s a significant concern,” said Jeff Cohen, CEO of Kline Galland. “We’re exploring revenue initiatives and also expense cuts.”
The nursing home will continue to admit patients, regardless of ability to pay, and Cohen said Kline Galland is applying for a certificate from the state to offer more home health care and outpatient services to shore up the agency’s $30 million budget.
When the economy first took a nosedive in 2008, the state was able to rely on raising some taxes for revenue, and legislators had just begun to make cuts, Carstensen said. In addition, there was money in the state’s rainy day fund that closed the gap, as well as federal funding for medical assistance. With that money spent, and the passage of Initiative 1053 in November that requires legislators to have a two-thirds majority to raise taxes, Carstensen said those options are now off the table.
“You could argue that all the damage that has happened before, we were lucky because we had some resources to triage and keep our head above water,” Carstensen said. “But maybe this year, this is the year that the water goes over and we’re submerged.”
Though the governor is putting greater emphasis on agencies like JFS to fill in the gaps, it has been widely reported already, including in the Seattle Times, that these organizations will be unable to do so. But Carstensen said finances is not the only problem in many faith communities.
“You run into the issue of competence,” Carstensen said. “How many religious institutions do you know have resident addiction specialists or experts in domestic violence, or are developing affordable housing or know how to fill out an SSI application and get off of Disability Lifeline and go onto permanent disability?”
Though the legislature faces the obvious fiscal hurdle that there just isn’t enough money to go around, the voting public made its opinion about taxation clear in last November’s election. Voters also believe, by a large majority, that the budget can be balanced through efficiencies and program cuts, according to a Stuart Elway poll published this week.
Given that, Carstensen somewhat echoed Gov. Gregoire’s call to remake the state’s government, saying that legislators shouldn’t give in to resignation about a seemingly impossible task.
“If we’re smart about how we make the cuts and we’re strategic about our decisions, we can save some programs [and] we can keep other programs intact, even in a skeletal form, so when we come out of the recession and revenues are back to where we need to be, we can go in and reconstitute them,” he said.
On the policy front, Carstensen will focus on Senate Bill 5011, a compromised carryover from last year’s session introduced by then-Rep. Scott White (D–46th) that would give enhanced sentences to perpetrators of crimes against homeless people under the vulnerable victims statute. The original bill had added homeless people to the malicious harassment statute, which Hilary Bernstein, director of the Pacific Northwest chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said was inappropriate.
“We’re pleased to see that this wording has been added in the place that it has been added,” she said. “ADL took exception because the characteristics that are part of the malicious harassment wording include things like national origin or sexual orientation or gender, things that are immutable, and we believe that the condition of homelessness is hopefully a transient one.”
The bill was expected to have a reading on Jan. 13, after JTNews went to press.