Budget crunch will hurt the poor

? In another month, the state’s worsening budget crisis is expected to start taking its toll on Kansas’ poor and low-income families, former Kansas welfare secretary Robert Harder said Wednesday.

Harder warned that if declining revenues force Gov. Bill Graves to reduce spending by 2 percent to 5 percent, the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services probably will be ordered to cut $10 million to $12 million from its budget.

“That would mean a reduction in a budget that’s already tight, and it would be a reduction that would almost have to affect poor children and poor families across the state I don’t see how it couldn’t,” Harder said, addressing a task force appointed by the United Methodist Church of Kansas to study and act on issues affecting children and families in poverty.

Harder, an ordained Methodist minister, was SRS secretary for 18 years. He served in the administrations of former Govs. Bob Docking, Robert Bennett, John Carlin, Mike Hayden and Joan Finney.

There’s little doubt that the next round of cuts, expected to take effect in mid- to late-August, would reach poor children and their families, Harder said. That’s because SRS already has imposed waiting lists on services for the physically and developmentally disabled, and most of the department’s medical spending is protected by federal mandates.

So far, services for children and cash payments to poor families have been spared.

Harder expressed frustration with gubernatorial candidates’ reluctance to discuss the state’s budget crunch and its effect on poor people.

“Whoever the next governor is, he or she is going to put together a budget that, to break even, is going to need at least $600 million,” Harder said. “And if they’re going to protect education spending as most of them have said they will that leaves social services to take most of the cuts.”

Four of the five gubernatorial candidates Republicans Dave Kerr, Bob Knight and Dan Bloom and Democrat Kathleen Sebelius have said they would resist cuts in school spending. Republican Tim Shallenburger has vowed not to raise taxes and on Tuesday said he would favor forcing the Legislature to pass the public school budget before all others.

Education spending accounts for almost two-thirds of the state’s $4.4 million general fund budget. SRS is the second largest category at 15 percent.

Tracy Bedell, a Lawrence social worker representing the First United Methodist Church, said local charities were ill-equipped to offset cuts in state support.

“Bottom line: All of these numbers translate into less money for food, less money for decent housing and less money for medical care at a time when, really, everybody’s already doing everything they can,” Bedell said.