By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
When several of the programs that benefit the poor and elderly populations set for the chopping block in last year’s state legislative session received a last-minute reprieve, social service advocates breathed a sigh of relief. This year they may not be so lucky. With a $2.6 billion additional shortfall in the state’s biennial budget, and a preliminary budget submitted by Gov. Christine Gregoire that even she said does not reflect her or the state’s citizens’ values, something will have to give.
That’s what had lobbyists like Zach Carstensen, director of government affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and who represents many of Washington State’s Jewish organizations, nervous as the short session began on Jan. 11.
“With the $2.6 billion deficit, the main priority is going to be preventing, as much as possible, deep cuts into social service programs,” Carstensen told JTNews.
When the state faced a $9 billion shortfall in 2009, legislators cut some programs to the bone and reconfigured many others, which means that, as a starting point for 2010, they have almost no fat to trim.
Claudia Berman, associate director of Jewish Family Service of Greater Seattle, said she is pessimistic for what this legislative session might bring after having endured last year’s cuts.
“What I can see from this is how substantially it will affect the poorest and the oldest, from suspending health care and addiction services and chemical dependency and [General Assistance–Unemployable],” Berman said. “The needs that are already great will only be greater.”
The General Assistance–Unemployable program gives unemployed people with temporary disabilities a monthly stipend to act as a bridge until they can return to work or receive federal assistance.
“Human service advocates generally are going to be spread really thin because there are so many programs that are [already] eliminated or suspended or cut really deeply,” Carstensen said.
A second budget released by Gregoire this week calls for $780 million in new revenue, which counts partially on one-time federal assistance. Additional specifics were not available as of press time.
In past sessions, Carstensen has focused mainly on serving Jewish organizations themselves. The cuts he hopes to hold at bay this year extend further into the community of people who utilize those services, he said.
“All of these are going to have impacts on clients that come through the social service safety net that the Jewish community operates. That’s what the focus is going to be, and it’s going to have an impact across the board,” Carstensen said.
Many of the people who utilize the women’s shelter at Temple De Hirsch Sinai, for example, or who receive hot meals at the University District Teen Feed, with which Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation has a relationship, are people who rely on some form of state assistance. Coverage for something as simple as an ingrown toenail, if the state’s basic health plan is eliminated, could be denied, resulting in amputation, Carstensen said.
He’ll be keeping a close eye on programs the governor eliminated completely from her initial budget: GA–U and adult dental, vision and podiatry services for low income citizens, among others. The state’s Basic Health Plan, eliminated in Gregoire’s first budget draft, was restored in the second proposal.
“We’re going to do our best to make the case that those programs shouldn’t be cut,” Carstensen said, but at the same time said that leaders of the organizations he represents would be open to increasing the state’s revenue, whether in the form of taxation or the elimination of what he called “tax preferences” that may once have benefited businesses but are no longer relevant today.
While recognizing the harshness of hitting people up for more money while the economy is still reeling, Carstensen said, “I don’t see how I’d be fulfilling my duty and my obligation to the Jewish community and its organizations if we weren’t at least talking about and participating in conversations about additional revenue.”
Compounding the shortfall problem is that fully 70 percent of the state’s $31 billion budget is constitutionally protected, meaning that the remaining 30 percent, more than half of which is in the form of human services, is the only place where cuts or program elimination can be made.
Responsibility for covering the costs of axed government programs falls onto social service organizations like Jewish Family Service, which at the same time has seen precipitous drops in donations even as need for its services goes up.
“When you have GA-U clients that rely on Jewish Family Service for assistance and you eliminate the program that these clients depend on, that extra burden falls on Jewish Family Service, it falls on the nonprofits,” Carstensen said. “Who’s going to bridge the gap between what the government is able to provide and what is provided by the private sector?”
JFS’s Berman said her agency is waiting to see what happens during the session, but she expects it to be painful.
“After that level of cut [last year], cutting again is catastrophic,” she said.
Jeff Cohen, CEO of the Caroline Kline Galland Home and Affiliates, said his nursing care facility is playing defense for this legislative session. A lawsuit against the governor last year left a 7.5 percent long-term-care funding cut in a holding pattern.
“We certainly don’t believe that we’re going to get any increases, but we certainly don’t want to withstand, either as an entity or an industry, any more significant cuts because that would affect patient care,” Cohen said.
The status of the suit could change at any moment, Cohen said, putting those cuts into effect right away. Up to this point, Kline Galland has not had to lay off staff, though any more hits to its budget could make that a possibility.
“Fortunately, we have been able to work the revenue side and increase our reliance on short-term [rehabilitation], where there have not been cuts,” Cohen said.
Carstensen and Cohen said they both have heard rumblings of a reintroduction of a bed tax, which could be disastrous for Kline Galland’s budget. Nothing yet has happened on that front, however.
Carstensen is also working with the Anti-Defamation League to amend two words, “immediate or,” to the state’s malicious harassment statute.
“The law, as it’s written now, doesn’t cover the fact that many times — most of the time — the threats are immediate,” said Hilary Bernstein, director of the ADL’s Pacific Northwest region. “We learned from prosecutors that this was a problem for them. They’d want to prosecute a case, and because it was an immediate threat and not a future threat, they couldn’t prosecute it.”
Bernstein said the ADL supports the bill because it gives prosecutors the tools to prosecute hate crimes that occur in the heat of a moment.
“Most of the time when these kinds of threats…happen, they’re between people that don’t know each other, so it’s more likely it’s going to be an immediate threat,” Bernstein said.
The ADL is split on a bill introduced by Rep. Scott White (D–N. Seattle) to provide additional penalties to anyone convicted of a crime against a person who is homeless or appears to be homeless.
“We support the part about creating additional sentence enhancements because we think crimes against the homeless are very serious crimes and we feel they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Bernstein said.
However, ADL will not get behind the section of the bill that would add homelessness as a protected class in the malicious harassment statute.
“We don’t support the idea of adding homelessness as a category because the other characteristics — race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender — those things are immutable,” Bernstein said.
Bernstein said protections should be set under a different section of the penal code that protects vulnerable classes such as children and the elderly.