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February 3, 2005
Program cuts hidden in governor’s budget
Yawu
Miller
As can be expected, Governor Mitt Romney’s assessment of
this year’s budget highlights the positive, noting increases
in local aid and human service programs.
State funding for child care, for example, increases by 2.5 percent
in Romney’s budget — a figure he noted during a meeting
with reporters from black, Asian and Latino newsmedia. Romney
said the changes would enable families receiving Temporary Aid
for Families with Dependent Children to enter the workplace.
“The purpose is to help people go back to work, to help
them with child care and to help them with job training,”
he said.
But under the state’s new welfare regulations, families
transitioning off welfare — those forced by the mandatory
time limits into job training programs and low-wage jobs —
would have no guarantee of state-funded child care vouchers, according
to state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson.
Under the new guidelines proposed by the Romney administration,
legal immigrants and families taking care of children who receive
welfare payment would also be excluded from receiving state-funded
child care vouchers.
“If you are a young mother who wants to go to work, you
wouldn’t have any opportunity to fare well,” Wilkerson
commented. “Once you’re off welfare the state has
no responsibility.”
Romney’s budget relies on increased revenues that have occurred
as the Commonwealth has bounced back from its recession. The governor
told reporters that businesses in Massachusetts have created 25,000
new jobs bringing the state’s unemployment rate down from
6 percent to 4.6 percent.
In his annual State of the Commonwealth address, Romney cited
savings to taxpayers from state consolidations, called for increased
funding for education, vowed to merge more departments, to roll
back the state income tax and cut the cost of unemployment insurance.
Romney’s proposed budget will likely undergo
sweeping changes as it passes through the ways and means committees
of the state’s Democrat-controlled House and Senate. If
Massachusetts’ Black Legislative Caucus members are any
indication, the governor may well be in for a tough battle.
“We don’t seem to have any programs for the working
poor,” notes Rep. Byron Rushing. “If you do everything
you’re supposed to do — get off welfare, get a job
— you still need eight hours of daycare.”
Rushing says Romney’s budget is predicated on his ambitious
program of consolidation, where state departments are merged together
for the sake of trimming bureaucracy.
Although Romney’s budget has included $2 million for much-needed
renovations to the Melnea Cass skating rink and pool on Martin
Luther King Boulevard, Rushing notes that staff at that facility
were cut after the Metropolitan District Commission was merged
with the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
“We have fewer staff working on the South West Corridor
Park, fewer staff working at the Cass Rink, and just one staff
person working at Roxbury Heritage State Park,” Rushing
said.
With just one staff member, the Roxbury Heritage State Park, which
includes the historic Dillaway Thomas House, has no capacity to
do programming.
Anticipating a thorough re-working of the state budget in the
House and Senate, Wilkerson suggested that Romney’s budget
is more a point of departure than a destination.
“The primary benefit of analyzing the budget is that it
gives you a glimpse of how his administration sees the Commonwealth,”
she said. “Poor people will not fare any better in this
budget as it is written. People who are uninsured will not have
any reason to think relief is coming.”
The House and Senate usually begin their discussions of the state
budget in April or May.
“The first debate will be the debate on revenue,”
said Rushing. “We won’t support lowering the tax rate.”
After the two chambers hold a conference committee to work out
differences in their budgets, the document is forwarded to the
governor, who has line-item veto power. The Legislature can override
the governor’s veto with a two-thirds vote.
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