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Religious and nonprofit leaders bemoan budget cuts |
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By Pat Norby
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Friday, 03 July 2009 |
Bishop Lee Piché, in his first official public act after his June 29 ordination as a bishop, joined religious leaders and about 200 people on the Capitol steps June 30 to lament Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s budget cutting plan, termed “unallotment.”
Second from left, Bishop Lee Piché, Rev. Peg Chemberlin, carrying flowers, and Rev. Peter Rogness lead an ecumenical procession of religious leaders and people of faith June 30 to lament the state budget cuts. - Photo by Dianne Towalski / The Catholic Spirit
The group, including parishioners from the Minneapolis parishes of St. Stephen and St. Joan of Arc and representatives from the Catholic Charities Office for Social Justice, walked in a funeral-like procession from Christ Lutheran Church in St. Paul to the Capitol to deliver notes to the governor expressing its concern.
Bishop Piché was among those who spoke, reading from a June 12 letter
to Pawlenty from the Minnesota Catholic bishops [Read the letter in
Archbishop John Nienstedt’s column on page 2A.]
“Every state policy and program, including our state’s budget, must
uphold the inviolable human dignity, value and worth of every person in
Minnesota,” he read, before adding his own signature to that of the
other bishops in Minnesota.
In an earlier interview, Becky Lentz, communications director with
Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, reiterated the
bishops’ concerns.
“We understand and appreciate the difficult and unfortunate situation
that the legislators and governor found themselves in, as far as having
to balance the budget,” Lentz said. “What concerns us the most is that
this appears to impact those who can least afford it,” she said.
Minnesota legislators were unable to resolve a $2.7 billion deficit in
the state’s budget during this year’s legislative session. The governor
turned to unallotment, a process which allows him to unilaterallty take
away previously allotted funding for specific programs in order to
balance the budget.
“Families and businesses are battling their way through this prolonged
economic downturn by re-examining their budgets, cutting expenses and
tightening their belts,” Pawlenty said in a press release. “State
government must do the same.”
Devastating cuts
The Minnesota Council of Churches, which organized the June 30 event, cited cuts to the following:
• General Assistance Medical Care.
• Emergency General Assistance and Emergency Minnesota Supplemental Assistance for those who are unemployable or disabled.
• Group Residential Housing, which funds homeless shelters and long-term housing.
• Children and community service grants.
• County mental health grants.
• Chemical dependency grants.
• Renter’s credit refund.
The cuts will take effect at various times during the current fiscal year that began July 1.
Sara Criger, chief executive officer for St. Joseph’s Hospital in St.
Paul, said the cuts will be devastating to all of Minnesota’s nonprofit
hospitals, which have a mission to serve everybody who walks through
their doors.
“In the governor’s plan, it’s about a $6 million hit from mid-2010 to 2011 to St. Joe’s bottom line, alone,” she said.
But the greater threat is to the people who are most vulnerable.
“The most heart-wrenching part is that people don’t get the
preventative attention they need, so we get them in an unnecessary
crisis state,” she said.
When General Assistance is taken away, it threatens housing and other
ongoing support services that help people become contributing members
of society, she explained.
“You strip them of all that support structure and now they have no
medications or preventative care. Now they are in crisis mode in one of
our emergency rooms. That crisis creates backlogs,” she said. “We have
to admit them because they are homeless, and they get stuck in
in-patient beds and we can’t discharge them because they have no place
to go. It bogs down the entire system.”
Everyone is hurt
It not only hurts St. Joseph’s Hospital, but it hurts everyone, she
said. Everybody waits longer in emergency rooms. Everybody waits longer
for beds. Greater stress is placed on people, hospitals and health
care, which results in greater stress for police, fire and ambulance
services because people with addictions go back to committing crimes.
“If you look at other states that have done away with General
Assistance-type funds, you find states that find themselves in worse
economic conditions,” she said.
The letter to Pawlenty from the Minnesota bishops cited the same seven
areas being cut as those noted by the Minnesota Council of Churches
and asked the governor to reconsider his proposed unallotments.
They wrote: “As you know, Gov. Pawlenty, the Lord Jesus teaches us to
do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This especially
applies to the poor and vulnerable.”
The Rev. Peg Chemberlin, Minnesota Council of Churches executive director, echoed the concerns of Criger and the bishops.
Rev. Chemberlin said her organization wants to make sure public
policymakers, the governor and legislators and the people of Minnesota
are looking at the impact of the unallotments on 30,000 of the poorest
and sickest people in Minnesota.
She cited these examples:
• For the person who’s living on the poverty line who will lose his
renter’s credit, that $5,000 a year makes a great difference.
• Someone on the verge of being homeless with no health insurance will
possibly have to choose between paying for housing or seeing a doctor.
“We are hearing from pastors that people are coming to [their] doors;
emergencies are stopping them in their tracks,” Rev. Chemberlin said.
“Now, we are going to take out the remaining safety net.”
Some people have suggested to Rev. Chemberlin that churches should make up the difference caused by the budget cuts, she said.
“If we have 4,000 congregations in the state and we have a $236 million
human services cut, that’s almost $60,000 per congregation,” she said.
“Churches don’t have the capacity to do that on top of everything we
are already doing.”
Less care, more homeless
Lentz said all 42 Catholic Charities programs, which serve about 40,000 people each year, will be affected by the unallotment.
In order to qualify for group residential housing, individuals must
qualify for General Assistance, and to qualify for General Assistance a
person must have a chronic medical condition that needs treatment,
Lentz noted.
“One of the key indicators of people maintaining their housing is
access to health care,” she continued. “[The cuts] seem to be
counterproductive to the often-stated goal of ending long-term
homelessness. People can’t maintain their housing if they don’t have
access to medical care, both financially and because proper mental
health care and the ability to deal with challenges is all tied
together.”
As the state cuts funding to vital services, the need is increasing:
the number of bed nights at Dorothy Day is up 40 percent for the past
year.
“We were full before the [economic] downturn. We’re beyond full now.
And it’s not just us, it’s all social service agencies in town. You
can’t continue to cut and cut and expect others to step up and fill
in,” she said.
“Society has an obligation to care for people in need. No one entity
can take care of this all by itself. The government can’t do all of it.
The churches can’t do all of it.
Social services can’t do all of it. Corporations can’t do all of it,”
she said. “It’s a partnership — every entity has to be at the table.”
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