- Pa.’s budget stalemate frays its social safety net, By Marc Levy (AP), August 13, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Pennsylvania’s six-week-old budget stalemate has turned off the spigot that normally keeps billions of taxpayer dollars flowing for social services for the poor, prompting scores of nonprofit agencies to lay off workers, take out loans and cut back to survive. Another month or more without action to free up that money could irrevocably tear a safety net that is already jammed with waiting lists and relies heavily on low-wage employees, according to nonprofit directors and the government officials who deal with them. For now, dollars are drying up for everything from day care for children of the working poor to people who desperately need mental health counseling…”
- Impasse could end day care for many children, By Brad Bumsted and Debra Erdley, August 12, 2009, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Jody Van Varenberg isn’t sure how she’ll pay the bills this month at Today’s Tot, her small child-care center in Washington. The state subsidizes many of her children but hasn’t paid Van Varenberg since June. The skeleton budget that Gov. Ed Rendell signed last month hasn’t changed her circumstances. ‘I’m one of the people who still aren’t getting paid,’ Van Varenberg said, adding that she wonders how long child-care operators like herself will be able to hang on. There’s no relief in sight yet for day-care centers across Pennsylvania…”
- Phila. ‘a city being held hostage’, By Daniel Rubin, August 13, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Sign of the times spotted in the Criminal Justice Center: We are out of paper. No copying folks. (Unless you supply!!) Here’s another sign. Defense attorney Sanjai Weaver has started taking SEPTA to work. The court has not paid the former prosecutor and judicial candidate since May, though she continues her court-appointed advocacy. ‘It finally dawned on me last Monday,’ she says, ‘You can’t pay for parking, you can’t pay for the gas.’ She is owed more than $15,000. As the economy has turned downward, Weaver has relied more and more on assignments from judges to represent the poor in criminal cases. Such work now represents close to 90 percent of her income. But government work turns out to have been a gamble…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty