TimesArgus.com - We Are Vermont

Vt.'s poor take aim at Goliath budget cuts

If Edna Fairbanks-Williams were rich, she'd fight more than $100 million in proposed government human service cuts with an army of lobbyists.

But the 77-year-old Hubbardton widow is poor. That's why, as president of the Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council, she's driving her tank of a used car to the state capital to defend herself.

"I haven't ever seen things so bad, except years and years ago when I first went on welfare and you had to wait six months," she says. "That was a long six months. Of course, I was young then and could survive."

Now the great-grandmother of 16 — along with an estimated 65,000 Vermonters who live below federal poverty levels of $10,830 for an individual, $14,570 for a couple and $18,310 for a family of three — is battling like never before to get by.

That 10 percent of the state's population may sound big, but it doesn't pack a corresponding political punch. The Low Income Advocacy Council lacks an office and letterhead. Volunteer members meet in a public library basement near the Montpelier Statehouse, working off photocopies because some can't afford computers for e-mail.

But what they lack in power they make up for in pluck.

Take 67-year-old Island Pond retiree Bernie Henault. The Northeast Kingdom member was 17 when, hit by a drunk driver, he broke his back and lost his left leg. That hasn't stopped him from standing up to Gov. James Douglas' "Tiger Teams" now trying to trim a state government that's facing a $150 million budget shortfall.

"If you look at tigers," Henault says, "they prey on defenseless villages."

The governor's proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 calls for $53 million in changes to state human services that could trigger the loss of about $50 million in federal matching funds and more than 1,000 jobs, economists say. A separate "Challenges for Change" streamlining effort would cut another $17 million in state money and up to $29 million in federal funds.

While state leaders and lobbyists have seen a 17-page list of proposed reductions, Henault laments that most Vermonters have yet to learn the specifics.

"If you don't have any information, you can't analyze anything, you can't suggest, you can't prepare," he says. "They say they're going to make cuts on 'less disabled' people. What does 'less disabled' mean? There's no meat and potatoes to statements like that."



'Not an easy sell'

A state Agency of Human Services "reduction list" presented to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee pinpoints dozens of cuts and broad-brushes numerous others.

The Vermont Coalition of Clinics for the Uninsured, made up of nine free medical and two dental clinics, would lose $50,000 — 7.5 percent of its annual funding.

Money for Department for Children and Families and Area Agencies on Aging programs would drop 3 percent.

More than 12,000 Vermonters with government-subsidized health care would see undefined hikes in premiums and deductibles to make up for an $11.5 million cut in coverage.

Henault wants to know the individual impact. Worried about the recession's toll on the poor, he asked the state Public Service Department for last year's number of utility disconnections. Staffers, he says, told him they didn't have the figure because they were shorthanded. Undeterred, he kept calling until he received an answer.

(More than 12,000 Vermont households lost electricity in 2009 for lack of money, the state reports.)

"I'm not an easy sell," Henault says.

Karen Lafayette knows that winning over lawmakers is harder. A former state representative from Burlington, she receives a modest salary from a nonprofit alliance of anti-poverty and faith groups to serve as the council's legislative advocate.

Lafayette understands government must balance its budget. But she fears that scrimping on the needy will cost society more.

The state could cut affordable housing programs, she says, only to unwittingly raise demand for homeless shelters. The state could cut energy-efficiency efforts, she continues, only to increase fuel and electricity bills covered by Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program subsidies.

"Foremost, we have to maintain the safety net," she says. "Although it's wonderful to talk about creating jobs, we first have to stabilize people economically."

To replace welfare with work, people need good training and health, as well as affordable transportation and child care. But Lafayette sees all those programs threatened, especially in a lingering recession that sparked a first round of budget cuts last year.

"We're all for creating efficiencies in state government, but we're concerned they're going about it the wrong way," she says. "They see a pot of money and say, 'We can't afford to continue this,' so they do the short-term penny-wise, pound-foolish thing."

Fairbanks-Williams feels the squeeze firsthand. Like all retired Americans, she receives Social Security and is covered by the federal Medicare program. But that pays for only about 80 percent of her bills, including the one for her last doctor's visit.

"They took my blood pressure and my list of pills and that was it."

Those 10 minutes cost $160 — $32 out of her pocket.



'Passion to our own'

Fairbanks-Williams will keep seeking care — she needs her health to continue her dawn-to-dusk deliveries of free food and clothing to her needy neighbors.

"But other people will wait and wait and wait before going to the doctor," she says, "They'll be in the emergency room or the hospital before they get done.

"The state doesn't understand the repercussions. They say look to the community and relatives, but if they're starving, how can they take care of someone else? My grandson has been out of work now for almost six months. Another just got laid off from the quarries."

Government isn't faring any better. The state just announced that last month's general fund revenues were short almost 20 percent of projections, threatening further budget cuts.

But the governor's 2011 proposal doesn't shrink everything. It calls for a 20 percent increase in bridge and culvert work (for a total of $113 million), $11 million more for higher education and $8 million more for technology "to help streamline state government."

Such hikes don't help Fairbanks-Williams' blood pressure.

"They haven't cut back on the big pins," she says, "but on the social workers in the trenches."

The Low Income Advocacy Council is a product of President Lyndon Johnson's 1960s "War on Poverty," which created community action agencies that, in turn, came together to form advisory panels.

Fairbanks-Williams helped launch the state's council in 1972 and has served on it ever since. Henault was a member for the first decade, then retired before returning last year. Vermont, as a result, has what's believed to be the nation's sole surviving panel.

The council empathizes with legislators' challenge. If government spares human services and slices budgets for education or transportation, a larger number of people could suffer.

"Sometimes low-income people who make use of human services are targeted as takers," Lafayette says. "All Vermonters use state services. We're all givers and takers."

But without a firm foundation, advocates argue, the state's poor will have nothing to build on.

"This is not the time to cut off support but instead to invest in long-term solutions, focusing on programs that are the key for getting people to be self-sufficient," Lafayette says. "The Legislature has to determine what services meet the needs of low-income Vermonters and then build a budget to reflect that."

Henault, for his part, wishes Vermonters would rally around their neediest as they have for Haitians impoverished by this winter's earthquake.

"We can't seem to bring the same passion to our own people," he says. "Go ahead and cut, but what are the results? Do what you have to do — but know what you're doing."



kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com

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