Budget Cuts: The Human Toll
The first in a series of articles focusing on individuals — citizens/clients as well as AFSCME members — who are suffering from budget cuts imposed at the state, county or local levels.
BRISTOL & NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
Tinikia Cooke and Geneva Hedgecock are far apart in age and life circumstances, but both are victims of a disaster beginning to happen. To close Connecticut's budget deficit, Republican Gov. John Rowland has closed four Department of Social Services (DSS) offices and has laid off 3,000 state workers employed in them — an order Council 4 is fighting. More than 800 of those workers — including Hedgecock — are members of the council. In addition, countless numbers of people who depend on DSS for vital assistance — including Tinikia Cooke — have been cut off from the help it provides.
The 51-year-old Hedgecock, who belongs to Local 196, worked for the state for nine years, the last five of them as a secretary in Bristol's DSS office. She did so despite continuously painful disabilities: degenerative disk disease and arthritis that "has riddled my body"; together, they force her to alternate between a cane and a walker. This past winter, Rowland's ax lopped off her job — and with it, the medical insurance that keeps her relatively pain free.
She could have transferred to a DSS facility in another city. But she can't drive a car; buses don't go there from Bristol; and — Catch 22 in action — a van pool that did "is closing because of the layoffs."
Life without the painkillers, Hedgecock's doctor has told her, will be grim: "He says that the pain will get progressively worse and, in three or four months, I'll be in a wheelchair." Still, she declares, "I'm not quitting in this fight" to reverse the layoffs. Indeed she's not. She recently participated in a big protest rally that she called "the most exhilarating experience of my life."
POINTING THE WAY. Tinikia Cooke, 17, survived a rough upbringing: "a little of everything — abuse, neglect, mother a drug addict, life in a group home." But she now attends a New Haven magnet school, pointing toward a career in social work. Cooke has qualified for state-supported independent living, and she has attained the co-chairmanship of the Youth Advisory Board in the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).
There she has helped young people like herself acquire basic life skills, gather their talents to get ahead in the world, and get grants of up to $300 for computers and similar tools. In addition, explains her DCFS caseworker, Local 2663 member Wendy Jackson, "She has represented those kids — their concerns and interests — and given them a voice at the table where policies governing their lives are made."
All that was blown away, also in January, when the governor's ax cut the position held by Caseworker Jackson. "She created the youth board," Cooke says. "There's no one else around to oversee it."
Like Hedgecock, Cooke is raising her voice in public protest.
— Roger M. Williams
