Meeting with Assemblymember Dan Logue’s Staff
Evan LeVang, Independent Living Services of Northern California (ILSNC) reports:
I just want to say THANK YOU to everyone who showed up this morning at Dan Logue’s in Chico. Media coverage was excellent: TV channels 7 & 12/24, Chico Enterprise Record (writer and photographer) and KCHO 90.1 FM – so look for reports this evening and in the days ahead. It will be interesting to see how we are portrayed and if our message gets out.
Part of our agenda for today was to deliver a series of questions to Dan Logue in order to help us determine his views on a variety of subjects related to the Budget Crisis. Logue’s District Director, Steve Thompson, met with the delegation and promised to let us know when we could expect the answers. All of the reporters who came to the rally were allowed to join the delegation for the meeting with Steve Thompson – something that I would call an extremely rare and fortunate occurrence. (We thanked Steve for his openness) Although we’ll have to see the reports before we can determine just how fortunate we were.
Before going to the questions, I also wanted to mention that Siobhan and Becky of Parent Voices provided powerful testimony on the vital importance of subsidized child care and how losing a program like Valley Oak Children’s Services would devastate families in our region.
OK, here are our questions … the clock is ticking! We will now work on getting the questions to Jim Nielsen and Sam Aanestad. Stay tuned to the NCSBA list serv for upcoming Alliance events.
“The individuals and organizations of the Northern California State Budget Alliance present the following questions to our elected representative, Assemblymember Dan Logue on July 12, 2010:
1. Are you aware of the extent of social service and health program cuts the Governor’s budget would mean in terms of numbers of people affected? Has your office researched the numbers of constituents faced with losing one, or more, of these programs …
a) IHSS
b) CalWorks / Subsidized Child Care
c) Adult Day Healthcare
d) SSI/SSP / MediCal
e) Programs for older citizens
f) Developmental disability programs
2. Do you have any plans for assisting your disabled and senior constituents who lose IHSS coverage and need transition to skilled nursing facilities? Are there any recommendations you can make to these constituents?
3. Do you believe that you have an obligation to reject policies and legislation that will cause harm to large segments of our community; that trying to reach compromise budget solutions with Assembly Democrats is a responsible and ethical approach?
4. Do you believe that there are ANY ways of raising revenue in order to at least partially prevent the unprecedented program cuts and/or eliminations proposed in the Governor’s budget?
5. Do you believe that California has the right to tax the extraction of oil, just like every other oil-producing state in the nation?
6. How do you justify billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts while thousands of vulnerable Californians are facing catastrophic cuts in vital, life-supporting programs? Does this not place the burden of balancing the state budget entirely on the backs of those least able to sustain more cuts?
