Advocating for Children

Disappointing decision regarding protection of children in Hamilton County

August 16, 2011 at 7:18 pm 4cforchildren Leave a comment

 Hamilton County will have two tax levies on the ballot November 8 – one for health care for uninsured low-income residents (Indigent Care Levy) and the other for victims of child abuse and neglect (Children’s Services Levy). What is most on my mind today is the Children’s Services Levy renewal which will (assuming it passes) bring in $4 million less each year than it currently does to provide protection from child abuse and neglect.

 The Hamilton County Commissioners approved the proposed levy amount to be the same millage as we have had for the last 15 years, BUT this will provide $4 million less each year for child welfare services, because $2 million of the funds will have to be used for services for severely handicapped children and property values have gone down, resulting in another $2 million loss. (The services for handicapped children have been paid for by the Indigent Care Levy which is receiving a substantial cut, and now will be paid from the Children’s Services levy.)

 Several things bug me about this plan.

• The amount of the levy has not increased in 15 years while demands for service and costs have significantly escalated.
• Children’s Services staff  have been reduced from 460 to 240 in the last three years with caseloads going from 12.7 to 20.1 in the last two years. These are people who rescue children from abusive situations, monitor situations where neglected children live with relatives or in foster care, and otherwise work daily to ensure that further harm does not come to these most vulnerable children. The staff are under great stress and carry a huge responsibility on society’s behalf.
• These child welfare services must be provided under federal and state mandates. We have a bare bones operation, meeting only the minimum mandated services. We can’t go any lower.
• The Commissioners’-appointed Tax Levy Review Committee, after studying the needs in great detail, recommended maintaining the current level of services and also using a portion of a County fund reserves as a source of additional funding. They definitely felt we could go no lower.

I suppose the thing that bugs me the most is that tax levies are the one area where voters get to have a say on what they want their tax dollars to support. By reducing the levies and assigning additional obligations to the reduced level of funding, the Commissioners have taken away our ability to give a thumbs up or down to the thoroughly researched Tax Levy Review Committee recommendations.

One Commissioner boasts of his promise to reduce taxes, yet the levies passed with 68% of the vote five years ago. Nearly seven out of 10 Hamilton County voters want to pay taxes for this very purpose. I imagine there are many, many things they would rather not support, but this is clearly one they do care deeply about. So I ask, do you want to save a few dollars on your taxes or spend those few bucks to make certain children do not come to harm because we did not have the resources to respond quickly enough to a bad situation?

Even though the amount of the Children’s Services Levy has been decided, there is a way to make sure that severely handicapped children are served without reducing services to abused and neglected children. (It feels a bit crazy to think our options are to help either handicapped or abused children. Surely there are other things we’d rather see cut. But let’s not go there today with the Bengals Stadium.) There exists a fund set aside to settle possible (but unlikely) state audit findings. Enough resources should be drawn each year from that fund to make up for the loss. Come on, Commissioners. Have a heart.

Entry filed under: Advocacy, Public Policy. Tags: Children's Services, Children's Services Levy.