Today the New York Times had a front page story on the horrible death of a Massachusetts group home worker earlier this year.
I work for SEIU Local 509 , and we represent over 13,000 human service workers in Mass., many of whom work for DMH or DMH funded, but privately operated companies. The issues raised in the article capture the devasting impact of budget cuts on the service delivery system. The mental health budget can not continue to take deep cuts with out putting staff and the persons being served at risk. I have followed this case closely and this is the first I heard that a group home had to bring a knife to work to feel safe. This is so sad. I hope this is a wake up call for those considering whether to cut the DMH budget further. More importantly, we have over 100,000 millionaires in Massachusetts yet some are afraid to ask them to pay a bit more in taxes so services to those in need are not slashed.
As a society, we will be judged by history not by how much millionaires keep – but by how we have cared for the vulnerable, and invested – or not – in the future. As of today, Massachusetts’ legislature is exercising miserable stewardship – 47th in support of higher education, removing dental care from the needy, and treating both human services workers and those for whom they care on the cheap, like warehoused goods.
He just approved a 3% raise for those who need it the least, the state employees toward the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Of course, as everyone knows, the bosses are always the hardest workers in any department or agency, and have risen to leadership through a pure meritocracy. I’m quite sure they all deserved that money, despite the impact on direct care workers and social service clients.
…that there’s only so much tweaking we can do to get the rich to pay more as long as there is a constitutional prohibition on a graduated income tax, right?
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and it’s been proposed: see a more progressive MA income tax.
The gist: increase the marginal tax rate and the standard deduction. Folks earning under $100,000 get a tax cut and folks over $100,000 pay more in taxes. Plus or minus. Read the fine print.
According to the linked article, this would raise $1.2 billion per year. That’s about 3% of the state budget.
This FDR Liberal thinks we need to restore funding to health services (including mental health), schools, and infrastructure. 3% won’t do it.
I believe that we should somewhat reduce taxes on lower-income residents, and increase them significantly on the wealthy (which would make MA similar to most other states). This would raise funds to restore critical services, but also stimulate the economy: when lower-income people get money, they tend to use it to buy goods and services which directly create jobs. When we give money to the wealthy, they tend to invest in stocks or in other speculation that is very inefficient at growing the economy.
people are more likely to keep working in unsafe or overwhelming conditions because they are afraid there is nothing else out there. It’s sort of falls right into place that jobs can be cut across the public and private sectors and there will be no worries that the remaining employees will leave no matter how difficult or unsafe the job becomes. It’s a win-win for the job cutters and a lose-lose for the rest of us. So sad for Stephanie Moulton and her loved ones.