A republican who cares about his constituents.

[Mountainman]

(I posted this in the wrong forum before)

I work for a county alcohol, drug and mental health dept. We have to drastically cut our budget next year do to decreasing revenues from taxes and federal and state grants. (Well we don't "have" to if the money was found by decreasing other department budgets a bit more.)


Yesterday there was a county board of supervisor's hearing on the adult mental health budget that we propose to cut per their directive. 85 speakers signed up to ask that the budget cuts not be made, about 50 of them spoke. Some were clients living in housing paid for by the county. They all were either previously homeless and or had such mental health problems that they could not make it on their own without the assistance provided to them by community based organizations (CBO's)who get money from our department, that pays for the housing and treatment.

Many of them would be homeless again (approx 800) if the budget was cut because the rent on the housing could not be paid by the CBO's.

Part of solution offered by some right wing speakers was to privatize the dept and lay off people like me. I am an accountant. We belong to the SEIU union so we had a union rep speak against the layoffs and privatization idea.

The board of supervisors are made up of 4 Dems and 1 repuke. So after about 30 people spoke asking that the budget not be cut and while the union rep was speaking the repuke stops him and asks a question.

His question was more or less like this. "A lot of my constituents in the north county are businessmen who find it increasingly hard to do business in this state, are you prepared to help them find ways to improve that? "

The meeting was about 5 hours of pleading to not cut the adult mental health budget and he is concerned about his business constituents!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Of course, he's a Republican!

[magellan]

2. He equated helping to keep at-risk people off the street

...to helping keep businessmen flush? Well, that's a Repub for you. Everyone's the same in their world, with the same opportunities and the same starting points, and if you don't make it it's just your own damn fault.

[Deja Q]

3. So his constituents are incapable of pulling up their own bootstraps; need his help?

Privatization, outsourcing, et al -- even I have heard too many stories, from real people, saying they were laid off because of it and their company regretted it.