Who Will Help Disabled As Cuts Destroy Lives?

Florida citizens who suffer from developmental disabilities are enduring heartbreaking cuts in services that will force many into group homes and institutional care settings. It is a heartless situation that state lawmakers cannot allow to stand.

Because the Legislature has failed to own up to the real cost of providing care for the developmentally disabled, thousands of Florida families are losing services that have allowed them to keep their relatives at home.

As a result, the lives of many disabled people will be uprooted. And Florida taxpayers will have to pay more money, not less, for their care.

It is as if Tallahassee has abandoned all logic.

Tampa Tribune reporter Lindsay Peterson detailed the devastating nature of the budget cuts recently with the story of the Erin Swinerton of Clearwater, a 31-year-old woman with Down syndrome who is going blind. With the help of state subsidies, Erin is cared for in her own home and attends a day program at the Pinellas Association of Retarded Citizens, where she works on small assembly jobs that give her life purpose.

Now the Swinerton family's annual state subsidy is being cut from $57,000 per year to $31,000. The family must choose whether to do without needed services for Erin or put her in a group home - at a cost to taxpayers of $60,000.

Erin isn't alone. In Jacksonville, news reports have detailed the story of Chipper Lees, a 44-year-old developmentally disabled man who for 16 years had worked at an assembly-line job that he loves. State budget cuts forced him to give up the transportation service that carried him to work. Now Lees has lost the one activity that brought meaning to his life.

Families of the disabled feared this day would come. More than a year ago, the Legislature capped payments for clients after the Agency for Persons with Disabilities overspent its budget by about $150 million. The state also decided to create four tiers of eligibility, based on a client's disability, and capped payments for some at unreasonably low levels.

If there is waste or fraud in agency spending, the Legislature should do what's necessary to rein it in, starting with a performance audit. But balancing the budget on the backs of the Florida's most vulnerable citizens deprives them of their dignity and costs taxpayers more in the long run.

It's expensive to care for people with disabilities in their homes, but not as expensive as forcing them into group homes and institutions. Taxpayers do not object to helping such families. After all, it is the role of government to provide for those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to care for themselves.

Lawmakers should revisit the capping and rationing of services, then devise a plan that gives disabled people the services they need to live as normal a life as possible.

And Gov. Charlie Crist should lend his voice to their cause. With no monied lobbyists in Tallahassee, the developmentally disabled need the governor to speak for them.