Oregon Public Broadcasting

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire delivered her second inaugural address Wednesday. In it she lamented the cuts she’s proposing to human services.

Chris Gregoire: “This budget contains as much care and compassion as we could muster. But it still hurts real people, and with each cut I chose, I saw their faces.”

The Governor and lawmakers face a $6 billion (and growing) shortfall in the next two year budget cycle. But some cuts are already being made to keep the current budget in the black.

As a result, Washington State is about to lose nearly half of its taxpayer-funded drug treatment beds.

Lawmakers are scrambling to head off the crisis. But as Olympia correspondent Austin Jenkins reports, one drug treatment center is preparing to shut its doors in a week.

Lunchtime at Prosperity Wellness Center – a residential drug treatment program in Puyallup. As the men who live here line-up to eat, a staff member calls roll.

Staff Member: “George, Russell, Carl, Richard.”

Lunchtime at Prosperity Wellness Center, a drug treatment facility slated to close January 20th.

One of the men is Thomas Larsen. He just found out that Prosperity will close later this month because of state budget cuts. He blames the governor.

Thomas Larsen: “This is crazy. We pay taxes to fix our kids from these problems with drugs and alcohol and for Ms. Gregoire to cut it off that’s way wrong, it’s wrong.”

Last week, the state announced an immediate 22-percent cut to residential drug treatment services to the poor. The cut is retroactive to the beginning of the fiscal year – last July.

Prosperity owner David Laws says that translates into a roughly 40-percent cut in the last five months of the fiscal year.

On Tuesday he gave layoff notices to 15 employees and announced he’ll have to close his 36-bed facility.

A second Prosperity House for women will remain open. Laws calls the state’s funding cuts penny wise and pound foolish.

David Laws: “Penny wise in terms of it’s easy dollars to find and cut, but in the long run the costs will be so much more expensive.”

Because, says Laws, his clients are the kind of people who end up back in jail or in the emergency room if they’re not getting drug treatment.

Mark Prior is one of them. An out-of-work roofer, he’s less than halfway through his 28-day treatment program.

Austin Jenkins: “So what’s going to happen to you? You’re not going to be able to complete your program?”

Mark Prior: “No I will not be able to complete the program. I’ve got two-and-a-half weeks ago and apparently from my understanding we have a week left here.”

Prior says he’s not ready to be back on the streets.

Mark Prior: “Oh ya, relapses, especially going homeless because if I’m homeless I’m going to go right back to all the people that I hung around with who are drinking and drugging and being homeless.”

It’s not just the Prosperity Wellness Center that’s being cut. This week, the Washington State Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse – or DASA - gave lawmakers the statewide picture: nearly 400 of the state’s 890 drug treatment beds for the poor will be lost in the coming months.

John Taylor runs the DASA program and calls the cuts draconian.

John Taylor: “A lot of blood and a lot of sweat and a lot of tears being decimated and dismantled. We’re being rolled-back twenty years as far as our treatment delivery system in this state.”

The cuts are part of Governor Gregoire’s strategy to re-balance the current two-year budget. In recent months, she’s ordered agencies to cut hundreds of millions of dollars. But key lawmakers are clearly concerned about the drug treatment cuts.

State Representative Mary Lou Dickerson is a Democrat who chairs the House Human Services Committee. She complains the governor is acting unilaterally.

Mary Lou Dickerson: “We haven’t been involved in these cuts and they’re taking place right now and we need to be partners in these kinds of discussions.”

Dickerson says she’s working to reverse the drug treatment cuts. But even if she’s successful in the short-term, the future is bleak. With a $6 billion deficit in the next two year budget cycle it’s not clear where lawmakers will find the money to preserve drug treatment programs.