Thinking About How Budget Cuts Are Made

[This is a long post.  I wish I could make these points succinctly, but the issues are complex.  So bear with me.  At least scroll down and look at the headlines.  And gain enough knowledge that you could follow my advice at the bottom and call your assembly member to discuss the budget.  This is a democracy.  You, the citizen, are ultimately responsible if it doesn't work. While this is about Anchorage, the same issues play out everywhere.]

Alaska Morning News' Len Anderson talked with Rene’e Aguilar Monday morning on Alaska Morning News on KSKA.   Rene’e is the Interpersonal Violence Prevention Specialist for the Municipal Department of Health and Human Services, Safety Links Program.  You can listen to the segment here.   The report was about multi-lingual outreach work the DHHS is doing to help victims of domestic violence gain access to information, educational materials, and local resources that can help them while the problem is small.
Sort of like getting people to a doctor when the problem is easily treatable, so they don't have to go to the emergency room later with a much more expensive and debilitating problem. Public Health calls this Prevention!

What the show didn't let you know is that Rene’e’s position is being cut and that DHHS Safety Links Program will not be able to continue to develop and produce public safety materials for vulnerable populations in Anchorage.

This is not a simple issue and I've been struggling with how to write about it. While some details are important to understand, it's really a larger philosophical question. There are various assumptions that lead to totally different approaches here.

1. Public sector v. private sector - Ronald Reagan came to power on the slogan of "Government is the Problem" and that the private sector was the solution.

After 30 years of private sector solution, we have a health care system that while good in some areas, is essentially full of holes. We have had some our most powerful corporations go bankrupt and require government intervention on the grounds that the upheaval to our society and economy would have been enormous had the auto industry and the financial industry not received massive bailouts. People were lured into houses they couldn't afford leaving some people wealthy and others homeless.  The private sector plays an important role, but it's based on greed as a key motivator. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's probably not the best of human emotions on which to base a society.

One of the rationales, I'm told, for cuts in the programs at the Health Department is that the private sector can do it better. Well, let's think again. The private sector does not make a profit off of people who can't afford to pay. Passing programs like housing assistance funds from HUD to non-profit groups doesn't work unless you pass on money to pay for people to administer the programs. Besides, social service non-profit organizations live mainly off of grants and other government monies. The same money that governments work off of.  (Sure, there are some non-profits, like Providence, that provide services in competition with private sector companies, but with the advantage of not having to pay taxes.  Their surplus doesn't go to share holders.  It's supposed to go into providing more services, though it can also go to large executive salaries.)

Small social service non-profits  might be able to do things cheaper than government agencies only because their employees rarely get a decent wage or benefits. Some of the executive of larger non-profits may do ok, but the people on the ground, the people who used to work for government agencies before so much was privatized, are just getting by in precarious jobs that could go away anytime. That may make a politician look good because he's passed the costs off to elsewhere and caused people to take big cuts in salary and security, but it has big costs to a community when well trained, educated people have to struggle to make ends meet.

So, for instance, in addition to Rene’e’s position, two other critical positions are being cut.  This is a total of three positions or 60% of the Safety Links Program. These two Emergency Services positions administer Housing and Urban Development and other money that passes through the Municipality to help keep people in their homes. They help people in emergencies with rental assistance, utility assistance, paying security deposits and first month's rent. They help pay utility bills so electricity won't be shut off. These are the kinds of small activities that prevent people from becoming homeless. These positions dispersed $198,082 in such direct emergency services to 498 households between October 2008 and August 2009. This was money that came from federal grants and from Chugach Electric and even the Anchorage Water and Waste Water Utility.

The rationale, I'm told, is that the private sector can do this better.

But others tell me that the non-profits don't want this money because it doesn't include money to pay for people to do all the work needed to disperse this money in a responsible and accountable manner. It requires people to interview applicants, monitor how the money is spent, fill out the documentation that the money was distributed according to the laws and regulations. But the positions to do that work are being cut.

Imagine the outcry if someone who didn't qualify got aid because there wasn't adequate staffing  to monitor how assistance was provided.



2. Individual or Collective Responsibility

Along with the private sector model, we've also been held hostage to the individual responsibility model. I'm not putting down people who take care of their own needs - in the traditional sense, I fit in that category.  I've lived within my means, my kids grew up without getting into any trouble, and they have managed to pay their own way in the world.

But I also recognize the extent to which my family upbringing and my genetic makeup and a good deal of luck gave me the skills and abilities to accomplish that. And like everyone else, I too am vulnerable.  My son's bike accident last May reminded me how vulnerable we all are and how easily we can become incapable of supporting ourselves.  Fortunately, my son was able to return to work, but he was lucky.

I also know that saying people are 'on the dole' because they are too lazy to work, is a self serving story. It gives us individual permission not  to worry about them because it is their own fault. Which ignores the impact on kids of a nurturing home environment compared to  growing up with alcohol, witnessing domestic violence, and having no books at home.  Those of us who group with advantages need to recognize that we didn't do it alone.  And that we do have a responsibility to help those who grew up with severe disadvantages.

In Eastern cultures, there is a much greater understanding of the role that society as a whole plays in whether people are rich or poor, sick or healthy. In the US we want to say that all the credit or blame goes to the individual.

It's this kind of philosophical difference that underlies decisions about where to cut funding.

Of the 3500 or so counted homeless people in Anchorage this year, about half are kids and families. These are people getting some sort of assistance because they are involuntarily not in stable housing. They could be in shelters or they could be couch surfing with friends or relatives. As I've related above, the position for PREVENTION of domestic violence is being cut and two experienced line employees who actually do prevention work are being replaced by two executives who are focusing on cleaning up homeless camps.  To be fair, I don't know the previous experience of the two executives, I haven't seen their job descriptions, so they may be much better prepared to do this work than I realize. 

At least some of that work, I know, has been spurred on by neighbors who, understandably, do not want homeless inebriates around their homes and where their kids play in parks and greenbelts. It is more a police function than prevention function. It's about helping the 'worthy' part of society by punishing the 'unworthy' part of society. The homeless are seen as a problem for the rest of us that needs to be swept under the rug, not as a problem of our society that we all need to work to alleviate.


3.  Budget Cutting Techniques.  I understand that the cuts in the Health Department at the Municipality were made by the director, Diane Ingle, in consultation with her department heads. The Mayor's office didn't tell her which programs to cut, just how much to cut.. Though I don't think the Department asked for the two executive positions for homeless camp work.  I would say that the Health Department has taken so many hits already over the last 15 years that there really isn't any program left that doesn't assist people who are really in need or doesn't protect the health of all of us as public health programs (immunization, clean water, etc.) are supposed to do.  Public health programs have had far greater impact on health improvements than private health care.  According to Whatispublichealth.com:

In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named the ten greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. These advances have been largely responsible for increasing the lifespan of populations; over twenty-five of the 30 years can be accredited to public health initiatives, while medical advances account for less than 4 years.

There is a bigger question about whether every department in the Municipality is equal. Are there some programs that have less critical functions, whose loss has less impact on vulnerable populations and the general quality of life of Anchorage? If there are, then asking all departments to make cuts without comparison to programs in other departments, while easier for the Mayor, is not a responsible way to make these cuts.  It allows him to say the departments made their own decisions while not really making the more difficult cross departmental choices.  It also takes the option of paying more for Municipal services off the table before we even look at the impacts of the cuts. 


4.  Long range or short range thinking.  This also involves tangible and intangible benefits and costs.  Government, in many cases, when successful, is invisible.  We have come to expect certain things from Government. So we do not notice when things are working.  We tend to notice when things are NOT working.   For example; When our car doesn't bounce because the streets are well maintened; when there's smooth traffic flow with working traffic lights; when there's effective water drainage;  when we can withdraw our money from the ATM without fearing a mugger; when safe and healthy drinking water flows from the tap;  we tend to take these things all for granted and not think of the infrastructure and work required to keep them happening.  It's only when these things are disrupted by potholes, by malfunctioning street lights, by flooded intersections, or our tap water is brown that we notice government.

Just as much of government prevents problems and is reactive only in exceptional circumstances, live is better for us all if we work to  prevent crime rather than to react to it after the fact.  This includes crimes like domestic violence which has an enormous effect on society, because the victims can't go back to their normal safe homes after the crime.  Their homes are the crime scene and this upbringing means these victims disproportionately become problems for all of us because they lack appropriate skills and emotional stability that most of us get and that enable us to be productive members of society.

So government is about preventing things from happening.  And it's hard to measure the things that didn't happen because government was doing its job well - the accidents that didn't happen because the streets were maintained and the traffic lights worked;  the robberies that didn't take place because kids were at recreational  and study programs after school;  the beating a spouse or child didn't get because parenting training and alcohol rehabilitation worked; the planes that didn't crash because the FAA systems worked.  You get the picture.  Government isn't about making a profit, it's about doing those things the private sector can't do.  But that's a different post. 

Prevention of problems is government’s most basic job.  Arresting robbers is a failure to prevent crime in the first place.  But prevention of most societal ills starts with making sure that people grow up in homes, where not only are they NOT abused, but they are positively nurtured.  We can argue about when government agencies should intervene with how someone raises their kids, but there is nothing to debate about whether fetal alcohol syndrome causes lifelong problems for the victims and for society.  Whether kids that were neglected or beaten or sexually abused are much more likely to become dysfunctional adults.  We all pay that price eventually.

But politicians who are elected for two, three, and four year terms, tend to think and act short term.  (Just as businesspeople have become trained to think about the quarterly stock reports instead of five and ten years out.)  The intangible benefits of preventing interpersonal violence, keeping pregnant women from smoking, reading to toddlers, are hard to measure.  This is not simply about poor families either.  Neglect and violence cross economic lines.  But richer people have more cushion and when they do transgress, they can hide it better.

These aren't easy issues to articulate.  To me they seem self-evident.  But to some, I might as well be speaking Farsi.

In a Democracy, we are all culpable.  All of us are ultimately responsible for the decisions our politicians make. Blaming politicians is shirking our responsibility. We are the electors of the politicians. 

We can't just shove the work onto them and not oversee what they do.  In Iran people risked their lives to demonstrate for what they believed.

Can we interrupt our television viewing and internet surfing long enough to do our jobs as citizens?

Call (or text) your Municipal Assembly members. Ask them about the cuts. Ask them what they see as our options. Let them know you think PREVENTION programs that cost a tiny fraction of the Municipal budget and which will lose matching money from other sources SHOULD NOT be cut.

Then call three or five friends and convince them to do the same thing.

Note:  I was first alerted to this issue at the DELTA meetings I attended last Thursday and Friday and then I did some follow up questions.   If I've missed important information, well, this is a blog and you can post what I missed in the comments.