By James Salzer and Laura Diamond
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Nathan Deal and state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler are fighting a multimillion-dollar tug of war, and many disabled Georgians believe they are stuck in the middle of it.
In the biggest financial attack on an independent, statewide elected officeholder in years, Deal is proposing to eliminate about two-thirds of state funding for Butler’s Department of Labor. Butler would lose about half of the department’s employees, and he may have to lay off dozens more.
Meanwhile, Georgians in wheelchairs, the blind, the deaf and others with disabilities say Deal’s proposal imperils a Labor Department program that helps them find work, and they have turned out in force at hearings on the plan in the state House. Others say the concerns are unfounded: The program in question is simply shifting from one department to another.
Deal’s budget proposal does an extraordinary amount of shifting, cutting the Labor Department’s overall state-federal spending from $553 million in fiscal 2011 to $136.8 million next year. Among the specifics:
● Federal workforce training money would go to an obscure agency run by a political ally of Deal’s. The budget for the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development, run by Tricia Pridemore, would go from $5.1 million this year to $73.4 million. Deal had backed Pridemore to chair the state Republican party, but she didn’t get the job.
● Safety inspections done by the Labor Department for years would move to the Agriculture Department. The ag agency already does some inspections, and Deal wants to centralize them in one department as part of his overall play to consolidate services.
● And in the move that has caused the most consternation, the Department of Human Services, which handles welfare, food stamps and child protective services, would now be responsible for training and getting jobs for disabled Georgians.
A bill to finalize the move of vocational rehabilitation programs to DHS is expected to be voted on by the House soon. The proposed transfer has alarmed some Georgians with disabilities.
“Right now, it feels like a power struggle with the disability community in the middle,” said Mark Johnson, who suffered a severe spinal cord injury in 1971 and is director of advocacy for the Shepherd Center, one of the nation’s premier rehabilitation facilities.
No loss of services?
Supporters say no services would be cut under Deal’s plan.
The Labor Department would continue to handle unemployment claims and most job placements.
Butler, a Republican who won election in 2010, said he doesn’t know why Deal — a fellow Republican elected on the same ballot — wants to cut away large parts of his department. Butler has been particularly aggressive in fighting the move of the vocational rehabilitation programs for the disabled.
“If I thought it was going to be a good thing, if I thought it would be beneficial, I would endorse it,” he said. “I don’t think taking people with disabilities and shuffling them off to a social service agency is a good thing. This is a jobs program and the Department of Labor is trying to get people back to work.”
Deal’s office said it’s all about consolidating services in agencies that fit the mission of those services.
Deal spokesman Brian Robinson noted that the governor’s budget calls for consolidating two departments and merging services in agencies other than the Labor Department next year.
“The governor is looking for savings, but he’s also looking to maximize services with existing resources,” Robinson said.
Some supporters of the changes say Labor Department programs have been mismanaged in the past. For all the complaints about moving the vocational rehabilitation program, some lawmakers say the Labor Department has cut the program’s budget in the past, although records show spending on vocational rehabilitation has gone up and down the past few years.
$700 million in debt
Legislators also are known to be anxious about the more than $700 million the state owes for money it borrowed from the federal government to cover unemployment insurance payments, which have increased dramatically during the economic downturn. Deal’s budget includes $33 million to pay interest on the unemployment trust fund loans, due Sept. 30.
Lawmakers are nervous about the possibility that they will have to increase taxes on businesses in an election year to pay the trust fund back.
Some say Deal was backing a different candidate for the job Butler won -- an assertion that Deal's office said is not true. Shortly after Deal won the election, he hired Melvin Everson, aGwinnett County lawmaker whom Butler defeated in the labor commissioner primary, to head the workforce development office.
Everson has since been transferred to another job in the Deal administration, and his workforce development position was given to Pridemore after she lost her bid to become GOP chairwoman last year. Robinson, the governor's spokesman, said Deal did not support anyone in the labor commissioner's race.
‘A misguided belief’
People with disabilities packed two recent meetings of the House Human Relations and Aging Committee when it took up the bill transferring the rehabilitation programs. Dozens also sent in letters to the committee, protesting the change.
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, Deal’s floor leader, is among those pushing the change, even though he has made glowing remarks in the past about his daughter’s experience at the department’s Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. The institute offers job coaching, vocational evaluations and certificate programs.
Collins, who was appointed to the committee around the time it took up the bill, said the disabled would get a wider range of services if the programs were shifted to the Department of Human Services.
But some disabled people said they are worried that the move assumes they are looking for handouts, rather than a helping hand to find a job. In the Labor Department, the disabled were like everyone else, they said: Georgians hoping for training and a chance to work. By going to DHS, they said, they would be segregated, as they had been at times in the past.
“The DHS does not have a clue about people with disabilities,” said Alice Ritchhart, a blind Brunswick woman. “They have a misguided belief that we are all so disabled that we cannot possibly hold down any kind of job other than sheltered employment.
“Under DHS, I can only see the taxpayers of Georgia having a bigger burden because DHS thinks the solution is to keep us on welfare.”
DHS Commissioner Clyde Reese disagreed, saying his department “has a strong focus on employment and putting people to work.”
Butler’s staff said the Labor Department has been showing results. For instance, the number of individuals with disabilities who have gotten jobs through the program has increased 24 percent — from 3,902 to 4,834 — in the past decade, they said. The number of disabled Georgians the DOL worked with went from 35,492 in 2009 to 39,738 in 2011.
The department has also put a lot of money into improving programs, schools and other facilities for the disabled in recent years, Butler said.
Moving jobs
Under Deal’s budget, about half of the 3,600 jobs in Butler’s department would be transferred to other agencies. Butler said he may have to lay off some of the staff that remains because of the loss of money. One Labor Department document says 80 to 133 jobs would be lost in department “career centers.”
The department also said the state would have duplicate employer marketing efforts, data systems, reporting and other employment services and lose federal funding because of the changes.
But Rep. Tom McCall, R-Elbertson, sponsor of the rehab bill, said the move will merely pick up a program and move it to another agency. “Nobody loses a job,” he said. “Nobody loses services.”
Former Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, a Democrat, said the change is simply wrong.
“Sometimes you have to move beyond your personal political agenda,” he said. “Why would you take the risk of doing this when you have potentially hundreds of thousands of lives in the balance? It would be an unforgivable sin to do it.”
