Bay Windows - April 15, 2009
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com

Earmarks for LGBT domestic violence programs, LGBT elder programs, and LGBT youth programs under both the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the Department of Public Health (DPH) have all been removed. As Bay Windows went to press it was unclear whether any LGBT-related program would receive funding under the House budget.

The House budget proposal, like the proposal issued by Gov. Deval Patrick in January, contains substantial cuts to spending across the board in response to the economic downturn. House Ways and Means proposed $1.8 billion in cuts to state programs and services. House members have until April 16 to try to restore some lost funding to the budget during the amendment process. This summer the House and Senate will negotiate a final FY 2010 budget bill after the Senate Ways and Means Committee releases its own budget proposal.

In a statement to Bay Windows, the Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth said it believes House Ways and Means has eliminated all the funding for LGBT youth programs, which were funded at $850,000 in the FY 09 budget.

"We are currently still determining the impact, but it seems that funding for GLBT youth both from the Department of Public Health and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has been completely eliminated," said the statement. "The commission plans to quickly work with our legislators to restore as much of the funding as we can. GLBT youth continue to have pressing health and safety needs, particularly youth of color and transgender youth. As the bullying-related suicide in Springfield underscores, resources are needed to make schools and communities safe for GLBT youth," the commissioners wrote, referring to the April 6 suicide of an 11-year-old Springfield boy who had been bullied and called gay by his classmates. "Eliminating such resources now is unconscionable."

Curt Rogers, executive director of the Gay Men's Domestic Violence Project (GMDVP), said his organization and other organizations funded under the state's domestic violence line item are currently trying to determine what the removal of earmark language means in terms of the allocation of domestic violence funding. The line item, which funds a wide range of domestic violence programs including LGBT programs, received a cut of more than $2 million, and most of the earmarks have been removed. Rogers said there was a push by Ways and Means to eliminate earmark language throughout the budget as a whole, and domestic violence advocates are contacting the Department of Public Health to determine how much of the $2 million cut affects their individual agencies. He said depending on how the cuts are distributed advocates may work with House members to file an amendment seeking additional funding or simply seeking to clarify how the line item will be spent by restoring the ear mark language.

"We don't know anything. There is a significant cut to this line item, and whether the strategy involves trying to restore that or clarify that with language, no one knows," said Rogers.

Lisa Krinsky, director of the LGBT Aging Project, said her agency would work with lawmakers to file an amendment to restore the Aging Project's earmark language. The Aging Project received $80,000 in FY 09 through the line item for the Councils on Aging. In the FY 2010 House budget the Councils on Aging as a whole was level funded, but Krinsky worries that the Aging Project might be at a disadvantage in applying for its funding without its own earmark language in the line item. The Aging Project is not an official program of the Councils on Aging.

"It's unlikely that we will continue on without [the earmark language] because it requires us going up against the Councils on Aging, whose line item we live in, and since that's not who we are, applying for those dollars in the same track really would not be a successful venue for us," said Krinsky.

The Ways and Means proposal also includes more than $2 million in cuts to funding for HIV/AIDS programs and services, bringing the AIDS budget down to $35.3 million. Mary Ann Hart, lobbyist for Project AIDS Budget Legislative Effort (ABLE), the state's AIDS lobbying coalition, said that given the magnitude of other public health funding cuts she will not be lobbying for an amendment to increase the HIV/AIDS line item. Last October Patrick made nearly $2 million in emergency cuts to the line item, and he cut the line item down to $35.5 million in his own FY 2010 proposal.

"Given that our $200,000 reduction from the governor's budget is relatively small and other areas of public health are getting cut a lot, we wouldn't file an amendment," said Hart.

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