Nonprofits warn governor on cuts" by Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff | September 27, 2008
Community healthcare centers, housing organizations, and fund-raising groups are waging a preemptive fight against program cuts, warning the governor that slashing funding would destabilize the state's leading employer - nonprofits.
The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network made the plea in a letter to Governor Deval Patrick this week, anticipating that their state funds are about to dry up amid state budget cuts.
Nonprofit hospitals, museums, healthcare centers, and human service agencies provide more than 13 percent of the jobs in the state - more than manufacturing or the financial services sector, the letter notes.
Bill Walczak, president of the nonprofit network and founder of Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, in an interview:
"The nonprofit sector, parts of it are in a state of panic right now because they know the state economy is in trouble, but they've already been spending money that they thought they were going to have. Especially for nonprofits that don't have substantial cash assets, they're worried that the dollars will be cut retroactively and they're going to cut money they don't have."
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded budget watchdog group, said the governor has limited options for whittling the budget and most of those options would also affect the local economy.
There he is AGAIN!!!!!
"I think that's a reasonable argument. But one could make similar arguments for most of the candidates that are subject to being cut. I'm certainly sympathetic to the concerns of the nonprofit community, but it's also true for public higher education and healthcare. The governor is facing nothing but unappetizing choices."
I'm so sick of the hurtful, painful, upside-down spending priorities in this nation and state.
Of course, "flushing . . . millions of dollars away supporting a highly profitable industry" when it comes to $300 million in taxpayer dollars for Hollywood is o.k., even as the price of a school lunch rises; paying $13 million for a computer software system that could have cost less than $3 million is all right because the winner was a close friend of the House speaker, even as my poorer-than-dirt district "has been struggling to close a $2 million budget gap."; the lottery shellling out "millions of dollars" for sports tickets for "lottery officials, their family members, and friends" is fine, even as schools are closing; making interest payments to banks to the tune of "a staggering $22 billion" for the Big Pit, as we call it around here, is required, even as bridges are neglected across the state; and again, paying off banks like UBS, who can "demand repayment of an additional $2 million a month beginning in January" while also receiving a "$179 million payment," while the state pension fund loses $1 billion dollars -- which still didn't stop the executive director from carving himself a nice "$64,000 bonus on top of his $322,000 annual salary."
Oh, and did I not mention the $1 BILLION dollar giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations, even though "it's never been easy to turn a profit in biotech?" Flush that money away, too, taxpayer. Of course, the war looters were next in line for a handout. And should the state be appropriating money for a "multimillion-dollar reconstruction" of golf courses?
