[nfbwatlk] Report on Yesterday's Meeting with Staff ofGovernor Gregoire

[Mike Freeman]

Even better is to try to contact them personally, either in the local 
districts or in their Olympia offices.

I doubt that our representatives and senators in Congress will have much to 
say about retaining DSB but I suppose trying to enlist their aide doesn't 
hurt.

Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jedi" <loneblindjedi at samobile.net>
To: <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 8:28 PM
Subject: Re: [nfbwatlk] Report on Yesterday's Meeting with Staff ofGovernor 
Gregoire


> Mike and List:
>
> Bob Sellers forwarded a web site created by Joanne Laurent 
> http://describeit.net/SAVE%20Dept.%20of%20Services%20for%20the%20Blind.htm. 
> This web site is one useful way to contact your local legislators and 
> advise them that combining the agencies is a bad idea. I have already sent 
> messages to my local legislators and to my national representatives. In 
> the case of state legislators, I explained the importance of dSB services 
> in my life and also explained how serious the situation is for blind 
> people in our state and nation and what DSB can and has been doing about 
> it. In the case of national representatives, I have asked them to please 
> advise the Governor that combination of agencies is bad for the blind. 
> Joanne's web site is easy to use, and she has placed all the necessary 
> tools you'll need to contact your legislators in one convenient spot. I 
> highly suggest her web site as a portal for making the appropriate 
> contacts.
>
> Mike, thanks for letting us know what's happening and please do continue 
> to keep us informed as to what we can do next.
>
> Respectfully,
> Jedi
>
> Original message:
>> Fellow Federationists:
>
>> Yesterday, Cindy van Winkle, President of the State Rehabilitation 
>> Council (SRC) for the Department of Services for the Blind (DSB), Denise 
>> Colley, President of the Washington Council of the Blind (WCB) and I met 
>> with three members of Governor Gregoire's staff involved in efforts to 
>> streamline state government and more efficiently spend the state's money. 
>> The staff present were: Kathleen Drew, Executive Policy Advisor, 
>> Sustainability, State Government, Reform, Kelly Wicker, Policy Analyst, 
>> Government Reform & Kari Burrell, Executive Policy Advisor, Human 
>> Services. The meeting lasted about an hour.
>
>> It was obvious throughout the meeting that the "bean-counter" mentality 
>> holds sway in the Governor's office. The staff apparently views all human 
>> services as interchangeable widgets that can be mixed and matched with no 
>> diminution of the level or quality of services to those being served by 
>> agency reorganization. Put another way, it was clear that the Governor's 
>> staff had virtually no concept that rehabilitating the blind is a 
>> specialized endeavor involving a unique mix of instruction in the skills 
>> of blindness both to clients and their famlies and teaching the clients 
>> to cope with the attitudes, erroneous stereotypes and misconceptions 
>> about blindness held by society. In the view of the staff, since the 
>> umbrella agency of the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) 
>> provides human services to many Washingtonians (including those provided 
>> by the general rehabilitation agency, the Department of Vocational 
>> Rehabilitation, DVR), it would be a good fit for DSB. It had not
>>  occurred to the staff that DSB might have special accounting expertise 
>> in making best use of vocational rehabilitation funds from the Federal 
>> Government (Section 110 moneys) and Social Security reimbursements. In 
>> fact, the staff maintained that even were the blindness groups successful 
>> in protecting the separate agency status of DSB, accounting functions 
>> would undoubtedly be ordered to be done by the general accounting agency 
>> for the state.
>
>> In investigating what organizational structure might be contemplated for 
>> DSB, the staff looked at states similar in size/population to Washington 
>> but admitted that it had not considered how well services for the blind 
>> were rendered by these other states with combined services nor were the 
>> consumer groups of the blind in those states consulted to ascertain what 
>> the blind themselves thought of their vocational rehabilitation services.
>
>> Staff would be interested in statistics re level of services ans 
>> satisfaction of clients with such services. I told them that we (both 
>> consumer organizations) had a wealth of anecdotal evidence that 
>> conglomerate agencies did not serve the blind adequately but that 
>> meaningful statistics might be hard to come by because (1) we, the blind, 
>> are a small minority and coming up with statistically valid conclusions 
>> is thus problematic and (2) how could one easily quantify "good 
>> services". (Yes, one can use closures as a measure but this does not 
>> always accurately reflect good service.) I did not mention this but, to 
>> some degree, efining "good services" is sort of like the late Justice 
>> Potter Stuart's definition of pornography: "I can't define it but I know 
>> it when I see it!"
>
>> Staff asked the three of us if we would meet with the head of DSHS to 
>> strategize how to meet our objections while going ahead with the 
>> reorganization. I said that we would always talk but that we would be 
>> extraordinarily difficult to convince and that we would see everyone in 
>> the legislative arena.
>
>> It boggles my mind that it never occured to staff to actually ask the 
>> blind themselves whether a reorganization was or could be made to work. 
>> It is obvious to me that appearances (that is, the structure of 
>> government on an agency organization chart) matters to staff almost more 
>> than functionality of said agencies. Although I did not state it this 
>> baldly, it would appear that in approaching the state legislature, the 
>> form of government matters almost more than the substance. I hate to make 
>> such a harsh judgment but it is hard not to come to such a conclusion.
>
>> So where to we go from here? WE can try to come up with anecdotal 
>> information regarding poor VR services under conglomerate agencies. 
>> Barring a miracle, however, I believe that we must now mobilize ourselves 
>> for the legislative session. I suspect that any reorganization will go 
>> through the "Government Operations" committees in the Senate and House. I 
>> will ascertain who chairs these committees in the next day or two and we 
>> should start making contacts. WE should also begin to contact our local 
>> legislators, making it clear that while DSB is not perfect, its current 
>> structure and placement within state government should not be altered and 
>> that the blind of Washington are united in this view.
>
>> Stay tuned.
>
>> Michael Freeman, President
>> National Federation of the Blind of Washington
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