Jason Pramas, the editor and publisher at OMB, goes on to put the entire issue in context:
Instead of expanding public services – and increasing the numbers of good unionized public jobs to ease the plight of the Commonwealth's working families – (Gov. Deval) Patrick is pursuing the same pro-corporate anti-people path trodden by center-right and center-left politicians around the globe since Margaret Thatcher's first term as the United Kingdom's Prime Minister in the 1970s. Cut taxes to the rich and corporations to the bone, impose austerity to the public sector, and call the resulting enrichment of the private at the public's expense “fiscal responsibility.”
Pramas is describing none other than the free-market strategy of mass-privatization, deregulation, and cuts in social services that has been the centerpiece of U.S. economic policy around the world in the past 30 years. In her book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein lays out the legacy of social devastation that that strategy wrought in countries from Argentina to Russia. And the same thing is happening on a relatively small scale in the Department of Developmental Services in Massachusetts.
The Patrick administration is both cutting funding throughout the DDS system even as it is closing state facilities and privatizing DDS services. Even the Arc of Massachusetts and other advocates of the private providers that stand to make money off the facility closures have argued that the closures are not sustainable in concert with the funding cuts.
Pramas notes that Gov. Patrick may pay a politcal price in terms of a loss of support from state employee unions for his free-market approach to the care of some of the state's most vulnerable citizens. We agree that in the long run, at least, this approach will do much political damage to Patrick and everyone associated with it.
It was great to see that someone thought enough of the unions protest to write about. The Boston newspapers wrote one sentence on this group.
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p>Mr. Pramas’ editorial was right on target. It is common place to see the usual groups protesting for their particular issue. But union members protesting a governor they helped elect, at a re-election fundraiser, in front of the national media entourage that follows the President is most uncommon.
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p>Mr. Pramas was astute enough to recognize this most uncommon assembly, walk past the usual groups protesting the typical buzz word issue of the day, and devote his editorial to the plight of both the severely mentally retarded residents of Fernald and its workforce.
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p>Thanks Open Media Boston for your support, for seeing the real story here, and for printing what every other media outlet should have printed but didn’t.
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I am curious about whether the advocates of keeping Fernald and similar facilities for the mentally retarded in the Commownwealth have any recourse to the federal court in Boston to stop the Patrick administration’s plans. The federal district court, namely Judge Tauro, held some authority over decisions made by the state concerning Fernald and other facilities for at least two decades under a consent decree signed by the state and parents and guardians of residents of Fernald. What is the status of that consent decree and does the federal district court retain any authority over the state’s power and authority to close Fernald and similar facilities?
In August 2007, Judge Tauro found the Patrick administration’s “global policy” to close Fernald to be a violation of his consent decree. Tauro ruled that Fernald should continue to be listed as an option for residential placement for its current residents.
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p>In 2007, the administration appealed to the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which overturned Tauro’s ruling last year. The Fernald plaintiffs asked the U.S. Supreme Court last February to restore Tauro’s ruling, arguing that the Appeals Court had failed to pay deference to him as a long-running expert in this case. But the Supreme Court declined to consider the plaintiffs’ petition.
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p>Unfortunately, Judge Tauro’s voice has been silenced. But many Fernald guardians are now considering filing appeals of their Individual Support Plans and of transfer notices for their wards. These appeals are first filed with the Department of Developmental Services and can be taken as high as state Superior Court.