Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political analyst.
[S]ome recent items in the news combine to raise an uncomfortable question, one that might be considered indecent in polite society.
The first item came in the report from the special panel Gov. Peter Shumlin ordered to investigate the deaths of toddlers Dezirae Sheldon and Peighton Geraw, who had been under the care of the Department for Children and Families before being returned to their homes, where they were killed.
Among the report’s conclusions were that “all agencies within the child protection system are carrying caseloads that are too high, which causes workers to triage, to burnout, and leave, and to cut corners in an effort to do the best they can.”
The report did not say – and it would absurd to conclude – that these two children would be alive were the department not understaffed. DCF, the report concluded, has more troubles than just being short-handed.
But would it be absurd to wonder about that?
Shift now to the far less tragic troubles of Vermont Technical College, whose president recently announced the layoffs of eight faculty members next summer, this after cutting six positions last spring and reducing the hours of several other employees.
Like DCF, Vermont Tech bears some responsibility for its troubles. It is under new management with a new president because the previous management was deemed not up to the job.
But that’s not the case at Lyndon State, where President Joseph Bertolino has warned of possible faculty layoffs next year. Clearly, one reason both colleges (and Johnson and Castleton States to a slightly lesser degree) are short of money is that they keep getting less of it from the state.
This is the same state whose leaders – from Gov. Peter Shumlin to the legislators to the business bigwigs and educators – constantly remind everyone how Vermont’s economy needs a skilled workforce trained in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects.
Reminding is easy. Paying is hard, apparently too hard. Teaching STEM courses is Vermont Tech’s specialty, yet since 1980 the state has progressively reduced its contribution to the Vermont State Colleges system, not in raw dollars, but as a percentage of … well, just about everything.
Hence the outrageous question: Is it possible that Vermont’s state government is spending too little money? Has the all-but-universal assumption that “government spending must be held down” gone too far?
The question may seem jarring because even in relatively liberal Vermont, almost no one comes out and argues that the government should spend more money.
Good thing, too. It’s a silly argument. Suggesting that state government spend more money for the sake of spending more money makes little sense.
Go to a legislative committee meeting. Read the op-ed pages. Listen to the talking heads on radio or TV. The verb most commonly associated with “budget” is “cut.” The only respectable thing to do with “spending’ is to reduce it.
Why, then, does it make any more sense to argue that it should spend less money for the sake of spending less money?
Yet that very point is not only regularly argued but widely accepted, and not only among conservatives. Go to a legislative committee meeting. Read the op-ed pages. Listen to the talking heads on radio or TV. The verb most commonly associated with “budget” is “cut.” The only respectable thing to do with “spending’ is to reduce it.
All this talk has been a big success. For years, Vermont’s governors and legislators have been making budget cuts. That doesn’t mean the budget actually goes down in raw dollars. But a measurement in raw dollars – like any statistic without context – is meaningless. Total spending goes up, but every year the Legislature makes cuts in agency budgets to keep that spending from going up more. Those cuts have consequences.
Thanks to the budget cuts, the state’s workforce has declined slightly, and not so slightly in some agencies where the impact falls largely on those with little political clout.
According to the Workforce Report of the Vermont Department of Human Resources, overall state employment from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2013 held just about steady.
But the staff of the Department of Mental Health went down 28 percent. Children and Families had 941 full-time equivalent staffers in FY 2009. That figure plunged to 840 the following year, recovered a bit to 917 in FY 2011, and dropped again to 906 before bouncing up to 948.9 in FY 2013.
Not a net loss. Not a stable situation.
Going back another year in Department of Human Resources data, Jack Hoffman of Public Assets Institute found a larger decline in DCF staff, which numbered 980 in FY 2008.
But cutbacks in state staffing barely begin to tell the whole story of the decline in spending in some areas. That’s because the state (like many others) outsources some of its most challenging responsibilities to private nonprofits such as the Vermont Council of Developmental and Mental Health Services.
This outsourcing allows the state to deal with the mentally ill and developmentally disabled on the cheap. That’s because what these people need is personal service from skilled providers, and the providers who work for the council earn far less than comparable state workers, said its executive director, Julie Tessler.
Some 85 percent of the council’s funds come from Medicaid reimbursements, Tessler said, and even as costs rise, the state has refused to increase those reimbursements, she said.
“We have a very hard time keeping staff,” she said. “We have reduced the hours of service some people get.”
A few years ago, she said, the council had the resources to help developmentally disabled adults spend 21 hours a week out of their houses – volunteering, having fun or working. Now it can only afford to get those people out in the community for 12 hours a week.
The staff and spending reductions – especially in social services and environmental agencies – appear to have been steeper during the administration of Jim Douglas, the Republican who was governor from 2003 through 2010. The Douglas years were marked by claims that through techniques such as “tiger teams,” and “challenges for change,” state government would be able to “do more with less.”
Perhaps it has in some areas. Computer technology and creative management can lead to greater efficiency. But neither a computer nor a manager can deliver services to a mentally ill person, investigate the conditions inside an injured baby’s home, make sure a new development does not obliterate a wetland or pollute a stream. Only a trained, skilled person can do that. Over the years, Vermont has chosen to have fewer of them.
Perhaps the wise choice. This is not a policy proposing forum, so there will be no suggestions here to cut spending elsewhere or to raise taxes so state agencies can hire enough social workers, therapists and investigators to do their jobs right.
This is a reality-revealing forum, and the reality is that all this spending-reduction has a cost – an economic cost if state colleges can’t train the software writers and medical technicians of the next decade, a more intimate, personal cost if the disabled get fewer services, the streams get more polluted, and the babies of poor, confused, and perhaps irresponsible young mothers are less safe.
It’s one of the world’s oldest lessons, and still true. You pays your money – or you don’t – and you takes your choice.
