The Foolish Farmer

At a recent legislative report, our local representative and senator laid out to their constituents the various budget cuts to state institutions and the ways they may be handled. Mr. Grover seemed to make light of the impact of these cuts, saying, "It kind of makes you wonder why we've been funding them at the higher level all this time in the past!"

This statement makes clear that he has spent too much time in the "echo chambers" of closed-door legislative caucus rooms.

It reminded me of a story that my father used to tell. It seems a farmer was concerned about the cost of oats to feed his plow horse. He decided that he could save a lot of money if he could just train the horse to work without feed. He decided to ween the horse gradually. A few months later his neighbor asked him how the experiment was going. "I almost had the horse completely weened," replied the farmer, "but he up and died on me!"

Mr. Grover sounds a lot like this foolish farmer.

He surely hasn't spoken to voters in his district who work at the State Hospital or for the Department of Corrections. A retired corrections official told me that trying to keep personnel cuts to a minimum has resulted in letting the most experienced workers go, so the increased workload is being carried by the least experienced. Will we have problems at the prisons?

Mental health agencies are being asked to do more with less. Will we have to give up hope for their patients? Will we be seeing more of them on the streets?

Another voter in the district told me that she lost her job when the state office that gave oversight to foster care was completely abolished due to budget cuts. Will we have problems with foster care families?

I do not pretend that budget problems can be handled painlessly. Everyone will be asked to make sacrifices. But we had better decide which of the state plow horses will be starving.