Commentary—

OK, Let’s Line Up And Cut Spending

By William A. Collins

Budget cuts,

As they accrue;

Always ravage,

You-know-who.

One prominent feature of democracy is that those who complain the loudest typically end up with the mostest. And by “loudest,” we generally mean richest. Money buys press releases, lobbyists, and in some cases, legislators. Not surprisingly, there is a political commonality among these moneyed folks — they pay a lot of taxes, and they’d like to stop. Therefore they often propose to cut “spending.”

“Spending” is generally defined as those appropriations that benefit somebody else. For the well-to-do then, “spending” would not include highways, railcars, police, colleges, or development subsidies. These items are vital to the affluent way of life.

No, “spending” tends more to be thought of as Medicaid, welfare, housing, childcare, education, etc. Of course, there are constituencies for these services too, but they’re poor. So, lacking money, they must depend on the good will and compassion of elected officials for their survival. This is generally a losing strategy.

Take New London. It’s a poor town with lots of poor citizens. And since it covers only a tiny geographic area, virtually all of its better-off suburban neighborhoods lie in other towns. Those towns, in turn, have little lust to help deal with the city’s problems. This contrasts sharply with, say, Stamford, which is huge. There countless million-dollar homes nestled out in the deep woods have to pay big taxes to help fund their fair share of the needs of the city’s homeless and otherwise downtrodden residents.

Lacking such resources, New London desperately seeks to cut “spending.” Indeed it may soon “privatize” some of its services. That means getting rid of union jobs with their decent pay and benefits. Thereupon new private contractors all too frequently hire immigrant labor of nondescript legal status to do the work. Further, “spending” cuts in Washington assure that there will be little immigration enforcement or employee protection to cover these new workers. The result is that with reduced pay and trivial benefits, these formerly honorable positions now become jobs that “Americans won’t take.”

And to make matters worse, New London is also laying off its two social workers. These folks aren’t paid to attend to the plight of executives at Pfizer or Electric Boat, or even the middle class. Rather they serve the underprivileged. These are the ones who need help in navigating the dismal swamp that separates them from their rightful entitlement to food stamps, Medicaid, housing vouchers, childcare, and all the steadily diminishing services of state and federal programs. Without social workers, one can safely predict the emergence of more street people and dysfunctional families.

But even Connecticut’s Gold Coast is not immune from such shortsighted policies. Here in Norwalk a few years back we too closed our municipal welfare department. The needy, it was claimed, could utilize the local Social Services office of the state. Then the state likewise cut “spending” and closed its office too. Now destitute people must make their way to Bridgeport or Stamford simply to apply for stuff, a virtually impossible hurdle for those with jobs, multiple kids, or no car.

Skinflint cities are not just being meanspirited. They’re broke. Norwich, no gold-plated town either, reports that state aid now accounts for just 36 percent of its budget. Ten years ago, it provided 45 percent.

Meanwhile, as Washington and Hartford chip away at “spending” for the poor, needs grow. Already 200,000 Nutmeggers use food stamps, the number is climbing fast, and 4,000 poor kids use state child development centers each day. But pay scales at many of these operations leave workers below the poverty line. Even food banks, dependent on private giving, are running short.

So perhaps our newspapers need to create a poverty page — like the business page — to keep readers and lawmakers aware of this uncivilized turn of events. But that probably wouldn’t work. Who’d advertise?

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)