Budget cutting is butchery, so it's easy to make fun of the man (or woman) wielding the meat axe. The person wearing the bloodstained apron, after all, is doing the customer's wishes, including keeping most of the dirty work out of sight.

Still, as the Almond administration tries to trim more than just fat from state spending because the well-marbled State House is short of cash, some suggested cuts show how brutal the process really is.

One example: Every winter, the state pays more than 15,000 welfare households $100 to help pay their heating bills. It's not enough. Natural gas bills, for example, might be about $1500 a year, and the poor are notorious for not paying up, for the logical reason that they often don't have enough money for heat, food, rent, clothing, to say nothing of a present for an upcoming birthday, a movie ticket, a used clutch, and sanitary napkins.

In fact, 7200 families are so far behind in their heating bills every spring -- at the end of a state-mandated moratorium on winter heat shutoffs -- that companies do turn them off. Households then struggle to pay a portion of past bills, some of which total $5000.

But now the state is facing a $200 million hole in next year's budget, to say nothing of $70 million in the current one, and the Department of Human Services has drawn up a list of possible cuts, per a request by Frank T. Caprio, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Some of are truly painful, including denying to 227 children state-paid child-care, which allows their parents to seek work rather than welfare. Others pass the buck to stressed-out institutions like Women & Infants Hospital, which would be asked to accept less money for caring for some low-weight infants.

The heating program proposal would trim the annual grant to poor families by $40, from $100 to $60. This would "save" the state an estimated $580,664.

Anti-poverty activist Henry Shelton, whose multiple crusades include keeping the poor warm, says the idea is absurd. He notes that heating bills increased 30 percent last year (although they're coming down about 4 percent this season).

Tracy Manni, a DHS spokeswoman, says she did not know why this particular program was suggested for cuts. It's only a proposal so far, she says, and it didn't show up on Governor Almond's list of possible cuts for the current year. But Manni notes that the budget process is still in flux.

Forty dollars here. Forty dollars there.

Issue Date: December 21 - 27, 2001