Hartford Advocate Article

Things are Tough All Over.

Thursday, July 10, 2008 By Andy Bromage
Kathleen Cei

Mrs. Connecticut, aka Lynette Letsky Piombo: "We're going back to a Depression-era mentality."

Mrs. Connecticut is worried sick.
The sash-draped, brown-haired, middle-aged beauty queen is practically barking at two members of Congress, seated beside her at a ring of tables, about the people in trouble that she can't help. Mrs. Connecticut owns a company that fixes furnaces. Her customers call her up desperate: They can't get heating oil because suppliers won't deliver less than 100 gallons. Her customers can't afford 100 gallons.
"What do you expect me to say to these people?" Mrs. Connecticut, aka Lynette Letsky Piombo, demands of U.S. Reps. Chris Murphy (D-5) and Rosa DeLauro (D-3). "Wait for the U.S. government to act next March?"
Murphy is silent. He wrings his hands. Then replies. "I don't have a great answer for you."
Mrs. Connecticut is not encouraged. In her travels around Waterbury, she sees families skimping on heating oil and instead huddling in a single room around a space heater they bought for $18 at Home Depot. Oil might be out of reach, but utilities can't turn the electricity off in winter—state law doesn't allow it.
"We're going back to almost a Depression-era mentality," she says. "I never thought in my lifetime I would be witnessing something like this. It's honestly shades of 1929."
On this day, four dozen social service providers are assembled at New Opportunities Inc., a Waterbury community service center, to share horror stories about how the cost of gas, food and pretty much everything else is pushing the vulnerable to the breaking point. One participant says he tells kids to join the Army. "You're putting your life on the line but at least you'll eat." A food pantry worker says longtime donors are coming back as clients.
Gov. Jodi Rell's $160 million in state budget cuts spare few parts of state government—even the programs that serve the neediest cases. Among the worst were: $464,238 from Community Health Services; $395,328 from AIDS Services; and $24,545 from the Needle and Syringe Exchange Program. From the Department of Social Services, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families lost $1.9 million and Housing and Homeless Services lost $2.1 million.
Social service providers were already feeling pinched because the state denied them annual cost-of-living increases this year—even as the cost of operations hits the roof. Ron Cretaro of the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits (CAN) says the outcome could be program cuts, layoffs or both. CAN is an alliance of 530 nonprofits, many of them state-funded health and human service organizations, and many of them located in, or serving, large cities. The groups are still absorbing the impact of Rell's cuts, but already the news looks bad. A Hartford-based drug recovery center is laying off three employees.
Shelley Geballe of Connecticut Voices for Children says the cuts are "pennywise and pound foolish." Leadership, Education, Athletics in Partnership (LEAP), the highly successful New Haven?based program that keeps kids off the streets year-round, but especially in summer, is losing $42,500. "If LEAP takes a cut and you can't serve as many kids, you risk having greater juvenile justice costs," Geballe says.
Robert Genuario, Rell's secretary of policy and management, admits the cuts are "a difficult pill to swallow" for social services, but insists the decreases are "modest and measured." Genuario says some cuts are coming from departments that got more money than they spent last year. Private provider programs "aren't losing a dime," Genuario says, because the governor knows they can't sustain it.
"There's nothing draconian here," Genuario says. "Connecticut has a solid infrastructure for its poorest citizens. It has become more solid during Gov. Rell's tenure."
Rell did give social service providers a four percent cost of living adjustment her first year in office, and three percent in years following. But this year's flat funding will hurt, providers say. Asked about that, Genuario blames the legislature. "The governor has no authority to provide these [increases] in the absence of legislation."
True, Cretaro says, but the cutbacks Rell did make are "going to put extreme stress on the community system."