Budget cuts strain services families need
In her column on state budget cuts, Jean Marbella wonders what a 5 percent cut to child care and family support programs will look like ("Yes, they're paper cuts, but they can go deep," Oct. 16). I can tell her.
Picture a teenage mother in a Family Support Center learning parenting and job skills. Think of a working family getting help finding and evaluating child care. Imagine a classroom full of child care providers learning how to plan activities that enhance early learning and school readiness.
Now, picture fewer children, parents and child care providers receiving fewer services, maybe at fewer locations.
It will take a little time and a lot of consultation with stakeholders before the state decides exactly which services to curtail. But Ms. Marbella, as well as policymakers and the public, should know that there is no fat in the budgets for child care or family support.
A 5 percent budget reduction means we will have to make real cuts to real programs - programs that help families attain educational goals and self-sufficiency.
And we will all pay many times over - for remedial education, social services and criminal justice costs - if these goals are not achieved.
Steve Rohde, Baltimore
The writer is acting director of the Maryland Committee for Children.
Consider privatizing the medevac system
Del. Dan Morhaim has performed an important service in calling attention to the operational guidelines, performance and costs of Maryland's Medevac system ("Medevac under a microscope," Commentary, Oct. 14).
Since the system's inception, many physicians who practice in hospitals near the Baltimore Beltway have suspected that considerable "body snatching" was occurring; that is, that accident victims who could have been adequately treated at local hospitals were whisked off to Shock Trauma to inflate its use statistics to justify maintenance and expansion of the system.
There has been little criticism of the system, and there have been few calls for accountability.
In the future, in the interest of transparency, the Maryland State Police should be required to post on its Web site the operational statistics for the medevac system.
Furthermore, an independent study should be done to determine whether the system should be privatized before we spend millions to replace the current helicopters.
