Outcry aimed at proposed state cuts
Senate panel hears testimony from 52
The message was clear during Monday’s State Senate Finance Committee hearing: no more budget cuts.
Health care providers and recipients, educators, administrators and students, as well as leaders of human service organizations from all over the state packed the meeting hall at United Auto Workers Local 55 in Amherst. Fifty-two people testified about Gov. David A. Paterson’s proposed deficit reduction plan.
“Why are you taking away my meds?” read a sign held by 32-year-old Terrie Lincoln.
The Rochester resident is in a wheelchair — the result of a spinal cord injury — and made the trip to the hearing because the proposed cuts could mean she would have to come up with at least $900 a month for her prescriptions and shots. “My health is at major risk,” she said.
Paterson wants to erase a ballooning $3 billion state deficit in the current budget. The reduction plan includes $1.8 billion in cuts. Of that, $1.3 billion would come from slashing assistance to local agencies, mostly through a 10 percent across-the-board cut in the remaining undisbursed funds for each of the targeted programs.
For Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the governor’s proposal means more budget cuts on top of the $40 million the institute has faced already over
the past year, said Dr. Donald L. Trump, hospital president.
In addition, he added, Roswell Park already has laid off three dozen union and nonunion employees, frozen wages of all non-union personnel and postponed $2 million in investments.
“What programs do we eliminate? What cancer patients do we cut out?” he asked.
About $286.6 million in reductions of the state’s share to Medicaid programs has been recommended. When matching federal assistance is factored in, the result is a loss of $746 million in revenue to providers of Medicaid services, including hospitals, clinics, outpatient services, physicians, nursing homes and other long-term care services, according to a Finance Committee analysis.
Linda Shamrock, an emergency room nurse at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center for more than 30 years, said that could mean more struggles at the only hospital in Niagara Falls. Already, many of the patients are uninsured and use the emergency room as their primary care facility, the hospital has about $7 million to $8 million in unpaid debt each year, and more than half of the patients are on Medicare or Medicaid, Shamrock said.
“We see a disproportionate amount of patients on Medicare and Medicaid, and we are disproportionately hurt by such [proposed] cuts,” she said.
“We serve vulnerable populations . . . We may not be able to keep our doors open after another round of budget cuts,” she said.
Under Paterson’s proposal, school aid would be reduced by $686.1 million. The midyear reduction would equal 4.5 percent of undisbursed aid.
Philip Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, testified that cuts to education are cuts that do not heal.
“To cut funding anytime for the already severely underfunded Buffalo Public School children is unjust. To cut their funding during the school year would be an immoral attack on their future,” he said.
Other education reductions in the governor’s proposed plan include: $1.1 million in nonpublic school aid; $10.4 million from the Summer School Special Education program; and $5.3 million to several college opportunity programs like the ones Henry J. Durand spoke about.
“This cut is the worst thing we can do right now,” said Durand, a senior associate vice provost at the University at Buffalo, which administers the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and Seeking Education and Elevation through Knowledge (SEEK).
“Together these programs have graduated more than 5,000 people every year since 1969,” said Durand, who is a director on the State University of New York Council of EOP. “We know we can’t add more resources at this time, but at least let’s not make things even worse.”
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