10/1/08

Columbus Dispatch

Alan Johnson, Mark Niquette and Darrel Rowland

Local services escaped unharmed the first time the state budget ax fell this year, but $198.3 million in new cuts unveiled yesterday by the Strickland administration will slice funding for welfare, public preschools, school-bus purchases and programs for the mentally retarded.

“We’ve got people if they don’t help them, they’ll end up on the street. To cut services to these people would be inhumane,” said Linda Oda of the Ohio Association of County Boards of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. The agencies Oda represents will take a $15.3 million cut.

“Some of our own caseworkers are going to become our clients,” said Joel Potts, senior policy analyst for the Ohio County Job and Family Services Directors Association. “There is no question about it, these cuts are going to have negative consequences on the families we serve.”

The list of new cuts is extensive: $10.2 million from county mental-health agencies, $12.7 million from welfare programs, $4 million from child-care subsidies, more than $13 million combined from public preschools, bus purchases, literacy programs and aid to private schools for books and supplies.

Childhood immunizations will take a $523,667 hit, and reductions will be made to AIDS prevention and treatment ($400,452), medically handicapped children services ($512,619), and abstinence and adoption education ($300,000).

Keith Dailey, spokesman for Gov. Ted Strickland, said, “The governor understands the difficulties and pain that these spending reductions may cause at the local level. These are difficult decisions, but these decisions are necessary.”

Dailey noted that state agencies absorbed most of the cuts in the first round of reductions this past spring, but there was no way in the second batch to completely protect local services.

With the economy continuing to struggle, Strickland ordered 4.75 percent, across-the-board cuts, while exempting core priorities — Medicaid, scholarship funding, adult and youth prisons, and school funding.

The cuts account for part of $540 million in budget adjustments ordered by Strickland for the current budget year, which expires June 30. The remainder comes from reclaiming unspent funds, unexpected interest and other “cash management” moves.

The new reductions come on top of $733 million in budget cuts and other adjustments Strickland ordered early this year.

John L. Martin, director of the Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, noted that in the initial cuts his agency eliminated 97 employees and left 89 other positions unfilled.

County MRDD boards rely on the state for an average of 19 percent of their total budgets.

“We know people all over the state are hurting right now,” Martin said. “You’d rather not have to go through the situation. But we need to make the best of it and go on.”

Trudy Sharp, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Mental Health, said her agency coped the last time by closing two institutions and making a 20 percent reduction in central office spending.

Sharp said $5.8 million will be cut from subsidies going to county agencies and a safety-net fund for the poorest agencies will be cut in half, to $4 million from $8 million. Some county boards, including four in Ohio’s Appalachian counties, will be spared.

More than half of the nearly $26 million in cuts at the Department of Education will directly affect services and funding to public and private schools.

Counties must absorb a $12.7 million cut in Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, formerly the state welfare program. Child-care subsidies will be slashed about $4 million, and money used for administration of food stamps and Medicaid (health care for the poor and disabled) is being whacked $6 million. That will result in the loss of another $6 million in matching federal funds.

The latter cut comes at a time when Ohio’s food stamp and Medicaid caseloads are at all-time highs, and is being levied on top of an earlier 13 percent reduction, said Potts of the county job and family services group.

“People are not going to get the health care they need as quickly as possible, and they’re not going to get food stamps as quickly. That means more people will be showing up in food lines and at emergency rooms.”

Dispatch reporter Catherine Candisky contributed to this story.