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August 29, 2006

Horrified Pt. II

The worst part about the epidemic of abused kids in the city: Fewer resources to help them.

Contained in PICA's most recent report on the city budget is this item:

"The largest estimated decrease in obligations is for the Department of Human
Services. Because of cuts in federal funding, the City was forced to reduced [sic] estimated DHS obligations by over $41M."

That's right. $41 million less for the agency that takes care of kids who are abused, sexually or otherwise.

This while the city has a surplus or fund balance or whatever you call it.

And yes, I realize those are two different pots of money, but c'mon.

Posted by wendy at August 29, 2006 08:12 PM
Comments

Wendy - your making the assumption that DHS's budget is exactly where it needs to be and then was reduced from there. I wouldn't make that assumption. There's a tremendous amount of waste, fraud, and inefficiency, even in an agency like DHS with such a noble and important mission.

Posted by: Philly Phantom at August 30, 2006 09:14 AM

PP,
While I agree that there's probably plenty of waste, fraud and inefficiency in all parts of city government, but I want to see candidates bring up specific examples - with dollar amounts. I know Tom Knox can bring up examples of inefficiencies that he corrected back in 1991, but that was 15 years ago.

Also, one person's waste is another person's hard-fought work rule. If a candidate sites a certain practice or staffing procedure as waste, I want to hear from the city worker unions to find out if there's a reason for that procedure and if it can be eliminated.

I know this gets a little off the point of the fact that 270,000 people in this city were sexually abused as children but let's have a detailed audit of where every DHS dollar is going before we start falling back on the old cherry of waste, fraud and inefficiency.

Posted by: Dan at August 30, 2006 09:34 AM

Well, I don't think it's an "old cherry" and while this blog is about the next mayor, in my view it's outside of politics. The DHS budget - last time I checked - was in the $400 million dollar range - don't know what it is currently. I have no clue if this is too low or high, whether their programs are successful or unsuccessful, etc. So yea, a detailed audit would be great, I suppose. Maybe this has already been done, I really don't know.

Posted by: Philly Phantom at August 30, 2006 10:58 AM
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