Baldacci Budget Cuts Ruining Lives

This cartoon makes light of an all too well known reality but it's not funny. It's a travesty and people need to wake up to what it going on. I certainly got a wake up call when I went into work on Friday.

I hear about all these budget cuts Governor John Baldacci is laying down, I knew it was going to affect social services, but I didn't know exactly how.

This past Monday morning 20 people in children's services arrived at work and were told they no longer have jobs. One woman who worked there for five years lost her job while another person who had the same job and had been there only 5 months did not get let go.

An unknown number of other people also were let go. One man who was a head supervisor in the adult housing program, who has worked there for 27 years and was three years away from retirement also arrived on Monday to find he no longer had a job.

Another man who has worked at the agency for 12 years and has worked his way up to a higher level position managing caseworkers was also without a job Monday morning. What is he supposed to tell his stay at home wife and three children who rely solely on him for income and health insurance? There is no where else that he can go and start out making as much as he was after 12 dedicated years. What are they going to do?

A job training program where people learned and practiced the skills they need to go out and gain employment in the workforce...Gone. Done. Cut.

So what's going on you ask? What's the bottom line? The bottom line is money. With the budget cuts that came down from Baldacci, CHCS had to cut 600,000 dollars from somewhere before the beginning of the next fiscal year or the entire agency would have to close it's doors. That's how bad it is folks. It was a decision between a comparative handful losing their jobs or thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people losing the services that they need in their lives.

So they cut the biggest dollar amounts higher up. It's easier to cut one manager who makes the biggest salary and just add to the workload of another manager who doesn't make quite as much than it is to cut a number of lower paid front line workers who work directly with the clients meeting their critical needs on a day to day basis. That's the only reason why I still have a job folks.

CHCS is one of the biggest social service agencies in the area. We are in four different counties and have been running since 1883. We do so much more than most people know. There is foster care, children's services, children's residential programs and crisis prevention and intervention. There is adult mental health, substance abuse programs, psychiatry and counseling, job teaching and rehabilitation, residential homes and transitional home for adults, case management, adult crisis prevention and intervention. There are also services for cardiac rehabilitation, and the deaf and hearing impaired and so, so, so much more.

All of these services were in danger of shutting down at the beginning of the fiscal year if 600,000 dollars wasn't cut from somewhere. All of these services would have been gone, all of these people out of jobs, all of these clients out of services and people literally tossed out on the street. So some were sacrificed to save the many. But that doesn't solve it. That doesn't mean everything is fine now. More cuts are to come and grant money is being pulled left and right because it's no longer there. And that doesn't make it any less tragic or devastating for those that lost their jobs on Monday.

I'd like to know how much Baldacci's pay was cut or any of the other people that sit up there and rubber stamp these cuts through. I'd like to know how they sleep at night. I'd like to know what they are doing to balance the budget without cutting vital services! I'd like to know what frivolous spending their doing away with. I'd like to know how much money is being wasted on needless items that are pork barrelled through in bill after bill while innocent, caring, decent hardworking people are losing their jobs over a fraction of the amount of money that those stupid projects cost. I don't care if it seems impossible, there is another way and it needs to be found. FAST.