President Jellison Testified before the PA House Appropriations Committee May 22, 2009
Testimony of
Kathy Jellison
President, SEIU Local 668
before the
PA House Appropriations Committee
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about Pennsylvania’s budget.
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 sweeping the country. 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.
Yet SB 850 would result in even more staffing cuts – in fact, over 3,000 additional positions would have to be cut. This would have a devastating impact on these vital services.
In addition, these serious staff shortages are causing more tax dollars to be wasted, because so many of our citizens can’t get even the basic services they need, and they will end up needing more costly services later.
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 others don’t 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. These proposals, if implemented, would also do a better job of protecting the safety of our client population.
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.
I am providing Committee members with copies of the major cost savings suggestions made by our members over the last several years. If these ideas were implemented, the Commonwealth could see an increase of over $1 billion per year in the state’s coffers.
We’re not talking about paying less for paper clips – our suggestions will save real dollars for Pennsylvania taxpayers.
This list is an overview, and we would be happy to provide more details about any of these ideas. Please feel free to contact me or our Legislative Director, Bill Bacon.
Our union members have also found many examples of taxpayer dollars being wasted. With a budget deficit approaching $3 billion, we cannot afford to waste any of our citizens’ hard-earned dollars.
For example, Governor Rendell has signed over $1 billion in no-bid contracts since he became governor.
Many of these contracts are for work that had been done or could be done by state workers. In some cases, huge no-bid contracts were awarded to the Governor’s friends and campaign contributors.
The biggest example is Deloitte Consulting, which has been awarded contracts totaling nearly $600 million since 2004. These secretive no-bid contracts were awarded to Deloitte at the same time when individuals employed by the company donated almost $40,000 to the Governor’s campaign – and the company itself gave $50,000 to his 2007 inauguration celebration.
In addition, a former Deloitte partner and a senior manager both had served as the state’s chief information officer before and/or after they worked for Deloitte.
Another example of wasted tax dollars can be found in the huge amounts the state has paid to Ballard Spahr, the Governor’s former law firm.
While we understand that there are times when the state has to hire outside legal counsel, the billing rates for these firms should be capped, as they were in previous administrations. The Ridge Administration, for example, capped outside attorneys’ hourly rates at less than $200.
On the other hand, Ballard Spahr, the Governor’s former law firm, has been paid rates as high as $600 per hour, and the firm has received over $11 million in just the last two years.
The bottom line is this: the Legislature should 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.
In some cases, the outside no-bid contracts are just plain wasteful spending. I draw your attention to a recent pilot program the state wants to implement.
This program would require employees to clock in using fingerprint technology, and will cost $2 million in start-up costs for the biometric time clock system, plus millions more for equipment and maintenance.
However, we were told that managers will need to sit and monitor the fingerprint time clock machines to make sure they all work properly.
If a manager has to babysit each machine, why not just have the employees use pen and paper to sign in and spend that $4 million or more to provide more services?
As far as Senate Bill 850, this is an outrage. The Senate Republicans simply took an axe to the state budget and then left town. Rather than look for responsible ways to balance the budget, they just slashed programs without regard to those who would be hurt.
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.