About 150 members of the disabled community packed the Luepke Senior Center Tuesday evening to hear 10 political candidates discuss issues they care about, from transportation access to the impact of state budget cuts that will leave many of the state’s disabled residents without essential services beginning in January.
Nine legislative candidates and Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart took part in the forum, a biennial event sponsored by the Clark County Disability Council.
The most heated exchanges came among opponents in two 49th District races: incumbent Democrats Jim Moeller and Jim Jacks and their Republican challengers, Craig Riley and Bill Cismar respectively.
Also taking part were Democrats Monica Stonier and Rep. Tim Probst in the 17th District and, in the 18th District, Democrat Dennis Kampe and Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, who is running unopposed. Tom Silva, D-Wapato, a candidate in the 15th District, which covers a sliver of east Clark County that is home to about 4,800 registered voters, also took part.
Access to transportation and education, the likely closure of state-run residential care facilities and impending across-the-board cuts to services for the disabled got the most attention.
Orcutt said the 6.3 percent across-the-board cuts ordered by Gov. Chris Gregoire in late September to plug a deficit in the current state budget are “absolutely the wrong way to go.”
Life and death issues
He said he’s particularly concerned about the planned elimination of prescription drug coverage for adult Medicaid recipients, which will save the state an estimated $39.4 million. “It can be a death sentence,” he said, especially for patients who need medication to control seizures.
Jacks said the 2010 Legislature passed at least one significant bill to help the disabled, requiring insurance companies to pay the sales tax on durable medical goods such as wheelchairs.
He said he believes the state has a role to play in ensuring a “robust” C-Tran because public transportation “gets at the root of freedom” by enabling people with disabilities to be mobile and get where they need to go.
Currently, the state contributes just 1 to 2 percent of C-Tran’s budget, Jacks said, but that may need to change in the future. “I believe the state has a compelling issue to make sure we have adequate transportation,” he said.
Cismar, Jack’s opponent, said he too supports C-Tran services for the disabled, but added, “I see the solution to this as being buses and vans.” If light rail is included as part of a new Columbia River Crossing, he said, “it’s going to be stealing money from C-Tran.”
At one point, Cismar addressed the audience directly, asking, “How do you like being the hostage? Every time we have a budget crisis, they trot out the children and the disabled” for budget cuts.
Moeller, who is running for his fifth term, delivered the most partisan message of the evening. Also addressing the audience directly, he said, “Every single Republican and every single Republican candidate opposed the budget we passed that helped fund your programs.” Every Republican also opposed the taxes on candy, soda, beer and cigarettes that Democrats passed to help maintain those programs, he added.
Riley, Moeller’s opponent and a longtime health care administrator, blamed the federal government for promising help with the state’s share of spiraling Medicaid costs to avoid deep cuts but failing to deliver enough aid.
“We have to work with our congressional delegation to make sure the feds deliver,” he said.
Moeller agreed, but he said the state also faces tough choices, such as the governor’s cuts in prescription drug benefits, a discretionary program under Medicaid rules. “That’s going to be something we have to look at,” he said. “The question is, Who do you want to make that decision?”
Riley responded that the state budget has grown four times as fast as the combined rate of population growth and inflation over the past 10 years. Democrats, he said, have created too many “little programs that suck up money from core services.”
For example, he said, two years ago the Legislature passed a bill that gives chiropractors parity with medical doctors in state reimbursement levels. “That raised the cost of health care,” he said. “We’re dying in little drips.”
Kampe, director of the Clark County Skills Center, took on a question from an audience member about the likelihood that the state will close at least one or two of the state’s residential centers for the disabled. The centers serve a total of about 900 disabled adults.
“They are expensive,” Kampe said. ‘Do we need five? We can consolidate and take that expenditure and put it into local communities, so families can care for their own.” That drew applause from the audience.
Orcutt agreed with Kampe.
“I understand there are some sensitivities about moving people with severe disabilities from one center to another,” he said. “But at some point we have to make that decision. I think it’s a move we’re going to have to make.”
Stuart said he’s proud of the services Clark County provides to the disabled, noting that 30 percent of county workers in janitorial services are disabled.
He too singled out transportation as an issue, saying, “It is a key to being able to get to a job in the first place.”
As a member of the C-Tran board, Stuart said, he worked to protect lower fares for disabled riders and fought a move to cut transit services to the disabled.
As for light rail, he said, “My focus is to provide you with a vote, and because of the work we did, there is going to be a vote next November.”
