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Posted on 10/01/2002 9:18:47 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Acting Gov. Jane Swift is planning to slash nearly $200 million from state programs - mostly in human services - within the week, as the stagnant economy threatens to blow a new hole in the red ink-soaked budget.
First quarter revenue data, released yesterday, showed an anemic $47 million gain in tax collections - not nearly enough to head off a deficit that's snowballed to $350 million.
``It's time to take some castor oil here,'' said Swift's Administration and Finance Secretary Kevin Sullivan.
By late this week, Swift plans to use ``9C'' emergency powers to roll out a package of ledger-balancing measures that Sullivan said would fall heavily on human services and state-funded health care.
Swift cannot use her emergency powers to cut big-ticket items like local aid, Chapter 70 education funding or the judiciary.
Sullivan would not confirm details, but the Massachusetts Human Services Coalition released lists it said it received from the executive offices of Health and Human Services and Elder Affairs.
The lists detail $96 million in cuts, which would slice $12 million from the Office of Child Care Services and at least $4 million from the Department of Public Health.
Most of the child care cuts would fall on blue-collar, working-class families who receive day care vouchers through a program that already has a waiting list of 18,000 kids, said Massachusetts Human Services Coalition Director Stephen Collins.
And Swift is seeking to slash $3.3 million from the new Prescription Advantage program, which provides cheaper drugs to seniors, according to the list from Elder Affairs.
``These are our grandmothers, our children,'' Collins said. ``We are taking the very concept of the safety net and tearing it apart.''
The elderly would also bear the brunt of Swift's planned $6.5 million cut to the home care program, which would yank service slots for 5,454 homebound seniors.
Home care has been a hot topic on the campaign trail, where Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Shannon O'Brien routinely talk about how it's 10 times cheaper to care for elders at home - where most would rather be - than in a nursing home.
``This is sort of like getting hit with a door - it's going to ache for quite a while,'' said Mass. Home Care Director Al Norman.
The latest round of cuts is a continuation of last year's crisis, when lawmakers slashed $900 million from programs, hiked taxes by $1.2 billion, and blew through $1.8 billion in ``rainy day'' reserve funds - a one-time cushion that's now virtually tapped out.
Swift plans to ask lawmakers to reconsider revenue-raising options they rejected last year, like curtailing Lottery payouts and making state workers pay more for their health insurance.
State budget-writers had been banking on a quick economic turnaround this fall, and built a budget on economic indicators that predicted the creation of 75,000 jobs this year.
Instead, the state has lost 66,000 jobs since spring, and business leaders from all sectors - high-tech, retail, financial services and utilities - told Swift last week not to expect a miraculous recovery.
Yesterday, the Massachusetts-based Fidelity Investments announced plans to lay off 5 percent of its work force, or 1,700 workers - with roughly half in the Bay State.
``We've basically come to the conclusion that the economy is not getting any better in Massachusetts,'' Sullivan said.
And state workers will not escape the downsizing. Sullivan said the state has saved as much money as it could by offering early retirements to over 4,000 employees and holding the number of layoffs down in the hundreds.
``There's more layoffs on the horizon,'' Sullivan said.
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