Saving human services?
AI task force punts on regulations, failures to communicate in the Gov's office, and an ethics slap of the hand.
A coalition of nonprofits is starting a somewhat long-shot campaign to change how Washington funds human services contracts with a simple message: we’re going broke.
The Save Human Services coalition, mostly big service providers who provide safety net services, cite a growing list of nonprofits who’ve been squeezed into closing or giving up state contracts. State contracts don’t cover overhead and there’s been no cost-of-living increases for years, so nonprofits are losing staff to Home Depot. Hammered by rising wages and skyrocketing insurance liability, at least nine nonprofits have gone out of business in the past few years.
That’s the problem statement. Solutions are tricky — politically, anyway. The biggest ones to emerge this far are a) a huge bump to contracts — we’re guessing it would be at least $100M per biennium — at a time when lawmakers have been looking to cut or hold the line on human services; or b) a “right-sizing” of the contracts, aka pay us the same but we’ll serve fewer people. The latter has a whiff of “...or we’ll shoot the dog”1 messaging, even if it’s not wrong.
