Lawmakers May Cut Locally Run Social Services

State lawmakers - especially House Republicans - have been talking up the virtues of local control as a cure for burdensome state bureaucracy.

But lawmakers also have dug their budget-cutting knife into local social service programs designed and run by Spokane activists and professionals.

The services - collectively known as Continuum of Care programs - serve about 10,000 Spokane families and were locally designed in 1988 to address local needs.

The programs include the Deaconess Regional Center for Child Abuse and Neglect, counseling for troubled families provided through the Martin Luther King Center and local school districts, the Crosswalk program for street kids and Alexandria’s House, a supervised home for teen mothers.

In all, the state spends $3.3 million on those and similar Continuum of Care programs in targeted areas around the state, including $1.1 million in Spokane.

But none of the programs would receive any state money under House and Senate budgets now being negotiated in Olympia - despite all the rhetoric this session in favor of local control. And solutions offered so far only further undercut local control, critics say.

Sen. James West, R-Spokane, a member of the conference committee negotiating the budget, suggested Thursday the programs be continued with state dollars one more year.

West suggested paying for the programs after that by taking money from the $16 million budgeted for Community Networks, a new state effort designed to funnel state dollars to locally planned and designed social service programs.

Spokane is home to one of 53 Community Networks in the state. A 23-member board is to spend the next year planning social programs tailor-made for local needs.

Board members took a dim view Thursday of West’s idea to push the funding of Continuum of Care programs off onto the networks.

“It’s passing the buck,” said Mary Ann Murphy of the Deaconess Regional Center for Child Abuse and Neglect.

If the state tells the networks what programs to support and how much to spend, it undermines local control, activists said. And the choice between funding the programs or watching them die is not a real one, they argued.

Troubled families who depend on the services now will “just get dumped,” said Marilee Roloff, a member of the Spokane network board.”You can argue there’s no use for these networks, but if you have them at all you shouldn’t be telling them what to do. It poisons the whole concept.”

Meanwhile, House budget negotiators have suggested killing the networks altogether. House Majority Leader Dale Foreman, R-Wenatchee, called the networks “a black hole” of bureaucracy and spending without any accountability.

But Linda Urquhart, another Spokane Community Network board member, said the opposite is true.

“We out in the trenches feel like it’s the state and federal government that are the black hole. By having citizens on these network committees, we figure that’s the way to make sure the money is well-spent. It’s peer pressure: Your neighbors are looking over your shoulder.”

Legislative conferees are expected to keep haggling over the budget for weeks.

Spokane activists argued the final budget agreement should continue state spending for the Continuum of Care programs instead of sending them begging to the Community Networks for survival.