Grits for Breakfast has posted a response to Jill Labbe's article that was a sharp critique of the Senate Finance Committee's proposal to cut some funds to the Windham School District, which serves prisoners in 112 statewide prisons. This school offers many two-year vocational programs for offenders.
The content of this article was quite a surprise considering the blog is typically seen as a left-leaning one. The blogger takes the side of the fiscal conservatives, with some exeptions, and presents a common sense case for his audience. I think that this was a great way of displaying to his readers that we can't fully sustain all the social programs we want, there must be sacrifices. I'm sure this ruffled the feathers of some of the more liberal readers.
The main argument that is used in the article is the fact that we can't sustain all of the funds to this program, so there must be cuts. With that said the cuts can't be off the top and must be done after adequate resarch has highlighted the weaker and ineffective aspects of the program. Labbe, the subject of the blogger's response, is adament that no cuts should be made to this program because of it's great effectiveness, but the state does not yet have solid numbers on the recidivism rates of offenders who have enrolled in the school. At this moment the Senate Finance Committee seems to be content with broad cuts to most if not all sections of the district instead of the smarter strategy of purging useless ones. This is where the two journalists and I agree. No cuts should be made until there is an effort to seek out the fat and trim down the offerings. Unfortunetely this is not the time to research considering our budget shortfall, so unfortunetly the cuts will happen without the neccessary research. We can only hope the program isn't cut beyond recognition and is sustainable until it can be fine tailored when new data and information comes to light. My fear however, is that the conservatives don't want to responsibly cut the program, but kill it.
