Budget cuts - especially government budget cuts - are constantly in the news these days. Some cuts are quite visible: A busy road doesn't get repaired or widened; some government employees lose their jobs; universities restrict enrollment.

Other government cuts don't get nearly as much attention. The results are evident only behind closed doors. But the burden can be severe for those affected.

Exhibit A in the latter category might be Florida's Home and Community-Based Waiver program for the developmentally disabled. The name is bureaucratic, but the goal couldn't be more simple: helping developmentally disabled people to live at home or in the community instead of an institution. To make this happen, the program pays for everything from adult diapers to transportation to in-home companions and care assistants.

But now, hoping to save $41 million per year, the state has installed a controversial funding formula that reduces help for 7,500 of the program's 31,000 clients.

Advocates fear that the developmentally disabled won't get the help they desperately need, and that some clients might be pushed, by financial necessity, from their homes or group homes into institutions.

"The reality is, there's only so much money," said Melanie Mowry Etters, communications director for the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities. READ MORE...

• Social Service Agencies Want More Time to Plead Budget Cases
  

  Orlando Sentinel, 12/13

As social-service agencies brace for deep cuts in state funding, they are getting stiff-armed by the lawmakers who will decide just how deep those cuts will be. Leaders of the Orange County legislative delegation have refused repeated requests to set aside additional time at their annual meeting Monday so the people most deeply affected by budget cuts can plead their cases. 

In response, advocates for the poor, disabled and otherwise needy adults and children have threatened to flood the meeting. More than 50 have signed up to deliver comments under the lawmakers' three-minute restriction on public testimony.

"The last cuts were deep, and these are going to be into the marrow. The consequences for some of these agencies are going to be devastating," said Dick Batchelor, a child advocate and former state legislator who had urged legislators to set aside an extra hour to hear from groups that rely on state funding.

"I know as a legislator it's very frustrating to hear this kind of testimony, but that's their job."

The delegation meeting is the only chance agency executives or citizens have to publicly address lawmakers about their concerns before the legislative session begins in March.

Florida faces drastic budget cuts brought on by a falling economy and declining tax revenues. Lawmakers will likely have a special session in January to close a $2.2 billion shortfall in the current budget, and the spring regular session may require cuts of as much as $5.8 billion in the 2009-10 budget.

Because education, health care and social services consume more than half the budget, cuts to these programs are expected to total in the billions of dollars. READ MORE...