Image provided by: SEIU Local 503; Salem, OR
About The Oregon public employe. (Salem, Oregon) 1981-???? | View Entire Issue (April 1, 2002)
Speaking Out By ELAINE EVERHART For Quality Care you five minutes will take me 25. I need caregivers 24/7. Five of them work shifts to - & help to do the things a « I healthy person does almost without think J| ing, Whether it's bathing, using the l ì i i y lis i toilet, getting in and RÌ out of bed, dressing or ■ eating, I need someone to help me do it. «K ■ The lives of real people will be im pacted by the deci sions the Legislature makes — or doesn't Elainë Everhart after speaking at the Govenor’s public hearing. make — over the course of the special session that begins on February 8. The state budget is in I cannot hold the newspaper in front of deficit by $850 million, a number my eyes, as you are, to read a guest beyond the comprehension of many of opinion. I can't raise my arms. I have us. But, for me, and hundreds of a rare disease that is turning m y soft thousands of others just like you, that tissue into bone. -My joints are fusing number determines the level of our together. Very little of me moves. safety, our health, our education and Anything that I do, I must have help our independence. with. I can't step. My jaw is clenched, These programs enable elderly permanently fused since 1975. I have Oregonians to continue to live at home. trouble breathing. My wheelchair is Another one gives teenaged girls a safe specially made so that I can "sit" in it place to reside as they turn their lives standing up. around. Some provide temporary My disease, called assistance for needy families. Working fibrodysplasia ossification progressiva Oregonians need care for illness, injury (FOP), sends deranged genetic instruc and catastrophe. tions that slowly displace muscle, We hear talk about bringing tendons and ligaments, locking me government closer to the people. Well, inside a rigid skeletal encasement. It it can't get any closer to me. The cuts afflicts one in two million births. proposed for the state budget will About 300 cases are documented affect me w here! live. worldwide with about half of them in The cuts will not reduce fat. the United States. I am one of two They will eliminate muscle, bone and persons in Oregon with this disease; a brain. Our lawmakers need to see young woman of about 19 in Klamath people — not just numbers — on the Falls also has FOB. spreadsheets in front of them. I've had this disease all my life. Legislators and the Governor Next week (February 13), I turn 55. have a big task. Now is not the time But, I was active. I loved to ride horses. for them to ignore or abandon the I could drive cars up until about 10 people our government was put in years ago. I've run my own business. I place to serve. was married for 31 years; with my husband, I hunted and fished. I was an EDITOR’S NOTE: To learn more about office coordinator at my church, put fibrodysplasia ossification progressiva ting in as many as 60 hours a week. Now, activities that may take (FOP), go to www.ifopa.org. L PACE 6 TH E OREGON PUBLIC EMPLOYEE ■■I h ment, pushing many of their costs — especially those of k-12schools — onto the state government. This measure would make it difficult to meet the needs of Oregonians, including those it acquired from local government in the past 12 years. Since Measure 5 's passage, state gov ernment has assumed more and more of the cost of k-12 public éducation, after the property tax — which largely was used to pay for local schools — was capped. Additionally, ballot measures approved by the voters can take huge bites out of the state government budget For ex ample, Ballot Measure 11, approved by the voters in 1994, enacted high manda tory minimum sentences for a long list of felonies. As a consequence, with forecasts that predict the prison population will exceed 14,000 by 2008, the state has em barked bn an4ambitious — arid expensive — prison construction program. If the growth of the state budget is limited without regard to demand for services, costly voter-approved initiatives or imbalances between revenue and expenditure, rising costs in one part of the budget must come from another. Building new prisons, for example, would have to be paid for with money now going for education, human services and employee pay and benefits. Together with the Oregon AFL-CIO, SEIU Local 503, OPEU is also assessing several other potential pro-active measures. One would require the state government only to contract with vendors who agree to certain standards of employment, one that prohibits a public employer from using public funds to > influence the decision of employees about union organizing, and another to increase the minimum wage to $6.90 during 2003 and that it be increased annually to keep up with inflation. At the same time, the Union is keeping an eye on some other harmful initiatives that could wind Up on the ballot, includ ing a measure contracting out the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and another of Lon Mabon's perennial measures attacking gay and lesbian rights. •
