President Jellison Remarks Lobby Day June 9, 2009
Remarks of
Kathy Jellison
President, SEIU Local 668
June 9, 2009
I want to thank everyone for coming today.
Our union represents over 20,000 members who work in state and county government and deliver human services to the most vulnerable populations in the state, including children, the elderly, and people with mental illnesses.
Our members work every day with our fellow citizens who are most vulnerable and have been hit the hardest by the current economic crisis. These people are precisely the ones who will be harmed the most by budget cuts in basic human services.
When the urgent need for human services is at an all-time high, it is exactly the wrong time for the Governor and the Republican Senators to be proposing cuts in these vital programs.
During these difficult economic times, our members are on the front lines, continuing to deliver vital human services for state and county governments. We see, every day, how the need for these services is increasing, while the funding has “flat-lined” for the last decade. This has resulted in severe program cuts, huge waiting lists, and families suffering all across the state.
Pennsylvania is 50th out of 50 states in the number of state employees per capita. Previous budgets have cut our workforce to the bone – and beyond.
At the same time that our workforce has been cut, the Governor has continued to hire more managers – a total of 1,664 more managers since he took office. We have lost over 5,100 workers in that same period, with over 1,000 of those lost workers being cut from County Assistance Offices across the state.
And, while the County Assistance Offices have lost about 15% of their workforce since Governor Rendell took office, the Medical Assistance funds these workers administer have increased by over 34%!
To add insult to injury, now the Governor says he expects our members to work without pay if the budget isn’t passed by July 17th. Our members are being used as pawns in the budget process, and that is just wrong. We pay taxes, we do our jobs every day – why should our members suffer because the legislators and the Governor can’t find a way to get their job done on time?
Because our members are on the front lines, actually delivering the services – doing more with less – we know how to make government more efficient and stretch taxpayer dollars as far as possible.
That’s why our members have identified millions of dollars in wasteful spending that could be cut and operational improvements that could be done, in order to make our government more efficient, while still providing vital services to our most needy citizens.
In fact, our union has made many proposals to streamline government, simplify the eligibility process, decrease fraud, and maximize the drawdown of federal dollars. If these ideas were implemented, the Commonwealth could see an increase of over $1 billion per year in the state’s coffers.
Many of these ideas have been presented to Governor Rendell and members of his administration over the last several years, but our suggestions have fallen on deaf ears. We hope that state legislators will step up and implement some of these ideas, in order to avoid the draconian budget cuts proposed by Senate Republicans.
In addition, we are calling on our legislators to demand that the Governor open the books on all of the private contracts he has signed. There should be much more legislative oversight and public scrutiny of these contracts. There are literally millions of dollars being wasted without any public accountability.
We understand that these budget negotiations and the current state of our economy present a real challenge to state legislators. However, we also believe this challenge presents an opportunity to transform human services in this state.
Rather than just making cuts in programs, we need to deliver these vital services in the most cost-effective way. That’s what our members work hard every day to do. And that’s what we are asking our legislators to do as well.
Thank you.