Funding cut for domestic violence services
■ Many Lane County
agencies dedicated to
ending domestic violence
feel effect of expired grant
By Sara Lieberth
Oregon Daily Emerald
In an ironic twist of fate, Lane
County was denied additional
funding for domestic violence ad
vocacy work Sept. 29, just two
days before local kick-off events
were scheduled to recognize Oc
tober as Domestic Violence
Awareness Month.
Three years ago, the county re
ceived a $2.3 million grant from
the Centers for Disease Control
under the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services to
fund a collaborative county-wide
program addressing domestic vi
olence. The grant, which has pro
vided more than $600,000 per
year in operating funds since
1996, expired at the end of last
month.
Before the grant expired, Lane
County attempted to find addi
tional grant money through an
open national competition held
by the CDC, but was unsuccess
ful.
“It’s a big loss,” said Lori Nel
son, director of the Crime Victim
and Survivor Services program,
formerly Victim’s Services.
“We’re scrambling to make ends
meet.”
Nelson said her office fielded
2,010 protective order requests in
the last fiscal year alone, which
are issued as either restraining or
anti-stalking orders. Two full
time positions in the program
must be eliminated in absence of
the grant.
“We’ve made a commitment to
keep things as they are until the
end of the calendar year,” she
said. “After that, we just don’t
know.”
The consortium formed from
the original grant was termed the
Coordinated Community Re
sponse to Prevent Intimate Part
ner Violence and brought togeth
er a range of agencies and service
providers, including Women
space, Sacred Heart Medical Cen
ter, Lane County Corrections, Op
tions Counseling and the
Domestic Violence Council
among others.
Phyllis Barkhurst, executive di
rector of Sexual Assault Support
Services, said the news was not
only a huge loss, but was unex
pected as well.
“There wasn’t really a plan B in
place,” she said.
Barkhurst indicated that the
agency will likewise have to elim
inate at least two full-time posi
tions from its staff, and that the
scope of their work was only be
ginning to see its impact.
“We were just really getting
somewhere,” she said. “That’s
the hardest part.”
While programs such as SASS
and Womenspace were able to ex
pand existing services with the
grant, other agencies that created
wholly new programs will now
suffer significant losses and, in
some cases, cease operations alto
gether.
The Domestic Violence Unit at
Sacred Heart Medical Center,
which performed education, as
sessment and intervention on do
mestic violence will have to close
because of the loss of its two full
time grant-funded employees, ac
cording to Nelson.
Another new program facing
possible termination is the batter
er intervention group at Options
Counseling, which dealt head-on
with sources of domestic vio
lence.
CCR project administrator for
Womenspace Jana Rygas said the
county’s primary shelter will try
to keep funded projects going un
til additional grant applications
can be written, but admits the sit
uation looks bleak.
“It’s like triage right now,” she
said. “Womenspace will have to
be on a bare-bones budget for the
next year because of this.”
The substantial success of the
programs over the past three years
makes losing the money all the
more frustrating, Rygas said.
Community awareness had
heightened and was allowing for
more women, especially in rural
areas, to be reached.
“As people are becoming more
aware, it means more of a demand
for services,” she said. “More
women were coming forward. It’s
terrible that we’re not able to help
them.”
Lane County was one of six mu
nicipalities to have received the
original CDC grant three years ago
and was chosen in part for having
the Domestic Violence Council in
place at the time.
“We looked at where women
face barriers and how we could
remove them,” Rygas said. “It
sure is going to be hard to do that
now.”
Facts on Domestic
Violence
Every nine seconds in the U.S. a
woman is battered by her husband,
boyfriend or live-in partner
At least 4 million incidents of do
mestic violence are reported each
year.
Battered women account for up to
35 percent of women seeking care
in hospital emergency rooms.
One in four young women are bat
tered before completing high
school, one in three before they’re
out of college.
SOURCE: Womenspace Domestic Violence
Services.
Protest
Continued from Paget
versity Senate discussed the issue
at last Wednesday’s meeting. At
the meeting, University President
Dave Frohnmayer requested the
formation of an advisory commit
tee consisting of six faculty, staff
and alumni members, as well as
six students to be appointed by
ASUO leadership.
McDonald said he acknowl
edges the importance of address
ing the issue.
“It deserves a tremendous
amount of study. It will take us
time to define the problem, re
search and then agree to a set of
solutions,” he said.
McDonald added that he hopes
to discuss the subject with stu
dents at the advisory committee
that has been formed to address
v the issue.
“I believe the advisory commit
tee will be helpful in moving us
in a positive direction.”
But this pace isn’t fast enough
for some students.
“This is definitely something
that needs to be done. The Uni
versity should act accordingly
and face up to the issue at hand,”
said Erik Morris, senior political
science major.
But McDonald said the Univer
sity is doing all it can to address
the issue.
“I always appreciate it when a
group shines the light of day on
an important issue such as this,
although it does disturb me that a
group would try to pass it off as if
we were trying to ignore the is
sue,” he said. “We are, in fact, be
ing very pro-active and highly
collaborative. Our advisory com
mittee will be looking into several
large groups that can help us find
the most effective way to deal
with the situation.”
Diversity
Continued from Page 1
gram will be more expensive than
the summer program but said the
administration is committed to its
success.
“Cost is always an issue. We
made our decision based on what
is needed to carry out the summer
interns’ recommendations,” he
said. He added that the coordinat
ing position will become more
important if other campus depart
ments and groups hire diversity
interns.
Troy Franklin, assistant dean of
student life, said the University
needs time to decide what the
next step in the diversity issue is
going to be.
“Summer was just the tip of the
iceberg and it always takes more
than a year to institutionalize a
movement,” he said.
Both Franklin and Hubin agree
that a coordinator will help create
continuity in diversity for cam
pus groups, and Franklin said he
feels it is the key to making the
program work.
“This summer was just the first
of many phases. The next phase
is putting the interns’ work into
practice across campus,”
Franklin said.
One of the remaining interns
from the summer is Jason Mak,
recruitment and retention staff
member for the ASUO. He wor
ries that he and other remaining
interns won’t have enough time
for the program now that they are
busy with other activities.
“All summer, the interns were
saying what they want to hap
pen, and the administration kept
telling us to wait and see. Now
we have jobs elsewhere and
maybe not enough time for this,”
he said.
Franklin said students need to
be patient and take time to digest
the information from the summer
interns’ report, which was only
recently released.
Over the summer, both Hubin
and Franklin were part of the Di
versity Steering Committee and
served in a coordinating role.
Franklin said the committee will
meet soon to decide how it will
function this year with the new
coordinator in place.
Chen added that it is time to
implement the suggestions from
the summer report. He and Mak
will start working on a proposal
detailing exactly what the coordi
nator’s job will entail.
“Nobody is pushing for what
the role of the coordinator will
be,” Chen said. “We need to start
saying what we want and how we
want it.”
Students interested in the Sum
mer Diversity Internship Program
can find more information online
at gladstone.uoregon.edu/
-asuomca/.
Gov. Kitzhaber might drop double majority provision from school plan
By Brad Cain
The Associated Press
SALEM — Gov. John
Kitzhaber says the school fi
nance plan he hopes to put on
next year’s ballot would make
a big difference for education,
even without a key element he
is leaning toward scrapping.
Kitzhaber said Tuesday he
might not include a provision
to abolish the state’s “double
majority” requirement that in
validates property tax increas
es for schools when voter
turnout is less than 50 percent.
Kitzhaber opposes that re
quirement on grounds that it’s
an unfair hurdle, but said he
might not seek its repeal as
part of his school package be
ll
cause it would have to be han
dled as a separate ballot mea
sure.
He said that would run into
extra campaign expenses and
detract attention from his oth
er proposals to create a rainy
day fund and to encourage
lawmakers to give schools
enough money to meet higher
standards.
“The important elements re
ally have to do with trying to
change the nature of the K-12
debate in the Legislature and
forcing that debate to center on
education goals we’ve estab
lished,” the governor said.
Kitzhaber’s apparent will
ingness to jettison the double
majority issue came as a sur
il
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prise to Bill Sizemore, the
anti-tax hike activist whose
1996 property tax limit im
posed the double majority re
quirement.
“The strategy of increasing
taxes in small special elec
tions, when no one shows up,
is the tax-and-spender’s secret
weapon,” Sizemore said. “For
John Kitzhaber to drop that is
sue is quite a surprise.”
It wasn’t the first refinement
in the school tax plan that
Kitzhaber hopes to place on
the November 2000 ballot.
The Democratic governor
earlier had indicated he would
propose a tax plan that could
raise hundreds of millions of
dollars for schools, as well as
provide stability for school fi
nances.
But he opted instead for sev
eral proposals that revise Ore
gon’s school finance system
without tax hikes.
One of his proposals would
set a higher constitutional
standard for the Legislature to
meet in funding schools by re
quiring lawmakers to give
schools enough money so they
can meet state academic
achievement standards or ex
plain why funding fell short of
that level.
Another proposal would es
tablish a rainy-day fund fi
nanced by the state tobacco
settlement, Common School
Fund and money now returned
to voters through the “kicker”
income tax rebate. The rainy
day fund would help schools
through economic downturns
that dry up state income-tax
revenues.
Political analyst Jim Moore
said he thinks Kitzhaber is be
ing pragmatic in fine-tuning
the school tax package he
hopes to take to voters.
“The governor’s plans for
funding schools and tax reform
seem to get smaller every time
he talks about them. But that’s
part of the political process.
The key is finding what you
can actually get done,” said
Moore, who teaches political
science at the University of
Portland.
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