Penn State University
is a huge institution.  Its total
enrollment hovers just below 100,000 students. 
It hires almost 9000 instructors. 
Thousands of others rely upon PSU for employment or economic livelihood through
providing goods and services to the university, students and faculty.  It is widely beloved by students, alumni and
community members.  It is, in many ways,
a world unto itself.

In the New York Times this morning, I read an article about
other types of institutions: those serving individuals with intellectual and
developmental disabilities.  It seems
that the State of New York
officially guarantees “whistleblowers,” that is, staff who report abuse or
neglect, with anonymity.  In practice,
however, the names of those who reported have been routinely turned over to
their employers.  The employees who
followed state law and reported abuse where generally disciplined for not first
going up “the chain of command” in the institution.  State officials claim that these practices,
having been revealed, will now stop and whistleblowers will receive
protection.  We shall see.

Many people have wondered why a college president, a revered
football coach and many other highly-regarded individuals would allow accusations
of child rape to go uninvestigated at PSU. 
While I don’t know the answer, I think it has something to do with the
nature of institutions.  Like those working
at New York’s
disability institutions, a person’s responsibility appears to end when he or
she reports an incident up the “chain of command.”  By doing so, the institution can regulate
itself within its own rules.  Questions
of employment relationships, union contract obligations, statistical reporting
and organizational reputation can be effectively managed.  Outside interference, be it through mandatory
abuse reporting laws, whistleblower protections, media investigation or
licensing and regulatory activity, is viewed as something else to be internally
managed, not welcomed.

DRO, along with our 56 sister agencies across America, have
authority to enter any facility providing care or treatment to individuals with
disabilities in order to investigate complaints of abuse or neglect.  Many facilities fight to keep their doors
closed to avoid scrutiny.  Like other
P&As, DRO has had to go to federal court to gain entry to facilities so we
could investigate reports of physical and sexual abuse.  During the past two years, the Social
Security Administration has provided funding for P&As to visit facilities
and providers who act as representative payees for their clients.  This initiative was prompted by confirmed reports
of exploitation and abuse by some payees who operate institutions.

Oregon is poised to build another large, centralized mental
institution in Junction City.  Long term care providers have flexed their
muscle in the legislature to be “carved out” of health transformation in order
to maintain an economically privileged position in the state budget.  There are clearly forces that promote, desire
and love institutions.  Discussions about
how to overcome the incentives to place institutional interests above those
they are supposed to serve are much quieter. 
Like at PSU, they can go up the chain of command and never be heard of
again.

In doing so, de Tocqueville put his finger on a core tension in the American consciousness: faith in, and fear of, democracy.  In today’s politically polarized environment, one side’s profession of majority will is viewed by the other side as oppression.  The proper uses of collective action – say, going to war or bringing down the cost of health care – are open to ongoing, fierce debate.  As fantastic amounts of time, energy and money are marshaled to gain political control through democratic elections, adversaries use the de Tocqueville template to warn voters of the dangers of majority rule; rule, that is, by a majority led by the other side.

Civil rights laws and the ability to enforce those laws are one way to push back against majority oppression.  Democracy in America cites the essential role that our legal system plays in protecting individual and minority group rights against the tyranny of the majority.  From the Bill of Rights to the ADA and Olmstead, there must be counter-balance in order for all Americans to preserve their freedoms.

But legal protections are not enough.  In order to work, they must be enforceable.  Organizations like DRO and legal aid receive public money to provide meaningful protection for individuals who could not otherwise enforce their rights.  Yes, ensuring rights enforcement protects poor people and people with disabilities.  It also protects our country and our system of government. 

Both DRO and Oregon’s legal aid programs are faced with ongoing cuts in federal funding.  DRO has recently closed its two rural offices and cut 1.5 positions.  Legal aid programs are laying off many attorneys and other staff.  Some in the political debate may think legal services for disadvantaged people are not important or somehow impinge on others’ freedoms.  This would be a misreading of the American way of life.  Ask de Tocqueville.

When a defendant is found "guilty except for insanity" in Oregon, she is usually committed to the state hospital for custody, care and treatment for a period of time that is necessary to control the person's symptoms and return her safely to society. The maximum period allowed for this commitment is the longest a defendant could have been put in prison if she had been convicted. The vast majority of successful insanity defenses are agreed to by the district attorney handling the case.

The state hospital hires psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and a variety of other professionals and skilled workers to restore the mental health of patients. The hospital has security staff to assure that treatment can be provided in a manner that is safe for patients, staff and the community. Patients are not in the state hospital to "do time." They are there to get well.

Recently, one patient ran away from a supervised walk on hospital grounds and jumped into a waiting car to make his getaway. He was captured 17 days later in Sandy, the same town where his 2009 auto wreck caused the tragic death of two people and resulted in his commitment for two counts of second-degree manslaughter.

Some have questioned whether patients at the state hospital should be allowed to walk outside the facility walls and whether they should be permitted to have uncensored communication with others. If the goal of the hospital is to return its patients to health, the answer is a resounding "yes!" This is, in fact, what the hospital is licensed and staffed to do and what it is asked to do by the criminal justice system.

Mental illness can be effectively treated and the majority of patients in the state hospital will recover and be reintegrated into society. Punishing them with long years of languishing behind high walls is bad for the patients, bad for the hospital environment and financially wasteful. It also violates patients' civil and legal rights to safe and effective treatment that is not unduly isolated from society, and it undermines hope for patients and staff alike.

We at DRO think the hospital has taken appropriate steps to review the individual security assessments of other patients to assure that they are up-to-date and accurate. The actions of one patient should not harm the treatment of others. A thorough investigation should be completed to determine if criminal prosecution is appropriate for those who planned and executed the escape.

Bob Joondeph is Executive Director of Disability Rights Oregon.

© 2011 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

All
segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and
damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority
and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.  Segregation … ends up relegating persons to
the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically
and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. 

Overcoming disability-based discrimination has
required, and continues to require, "struggle."  Every step toward equality has been
hard-fought against entrenched interests and attitudes.  Each victory has needed to be defended.  This experience is common to all civil rights
movements.  Disability rights may,
however, demand a particularly large change in thinking, both about
disabilities and about society.  This new
way of thinking is imbedded in the ADA.

The
first major step toward the ADA occurred in 1973 with the passage of Section
504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.  Section 504 banned discrimination on the basis of disability by
recipients of federal funds.  It was
modeled after other civil rights laws that banned discrimination based upon
race, ethnic origin and sex by federal fund recipients.

This
represented the first time federal law recognized the exclusion and segregation
of people with disabilities as "discrimination," and the first time
people with disabilities were legally recognized as a class, in effect a
minority group.

In
1973 the State of Oregon also passed its first law prohibiting discrimination
against people with disabilities.

The
Federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare was tasked with developing
regulations to implement Section 504. 
Only after numerous demonstrations and political actions did that job
get done: four years later.  The
regulations enacted on May 4, 1977 formed the basis of the ADA.  Disability advocates fought successfully to keep the regulations from
being revoked in the early 1980s when business interests wanted to be free from
federal interference. 

During
the 1980s, there was also resistance from the US Supreme Court.  Disability rights advocates joined in the
effort to pass the Civil Rights Restoration Act which overturned a Supreme
Court decision that had severely limited the reach of all statutes prohibiting
discrimination by recipients of federal funds. 
(Grove City College v. Bell).

Legislation
was also enacted to overturn Supreme Court decisions and reinstate prohibitions
against disability-based discrimination by airlines, reinstate the right to sue
states for violations of Section 504, and reinstate the right of parents to
recover attorney fees under the Education for Handicapped Children's Act (now
called IDEA).

In
1988, the Fair Housing Act was amended to prohibit discrimination against
individuals with disabilities and the first version of the ADA was introduced
in Congress.

The
version of the ADA that passed on July 26, 1990 was introduced Senators Harkin
and Durrenberger and Representatives Coelho and Fish (father of City
Commissioner Nick Fish).  Justin Dart,
Chair of the Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of People
with Disabilities, traversed the country holding public hearings which were
attended by thousands of people with disabilities, friends, and families
documenting the injustice of discrimination in the lives of people with
disabilities.

THE ACT

The ADA has five sections, or "titles"
which are regulated by different federal agencies:

• Title I - Employment - directed
  by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); and the U.S.
  Department of Labor (DOL).
• Title II
  - Public Services - (and
  public transportation) directed by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA);
  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); U.S. Department of
  Education (ED); U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
• Title III
  - Public Accommodations - directed
  by U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI); U.S. Department of Agriculture
  (USDA).
• Title IV
  - Telecommunications - directed
  by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
• Title V -
  Miscellaneous Provisions.

Some of the key Findings and Purposes set out in Section
2 of the ADA are:

1. Some 43,000,000 Americans have one or more
   physical or mental disabilities, and this number is increasing as the population
   as a whole is growing older;
2. Historically, society has tended to isolate and
   segregate individuals with disabilities, and, this continues to be a serious
   and pervasive social problem;
3. Discrimination against individuals with
   disabilities persists in employment, housing, public accommodations, education,
   transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services,
   voting, and access to public services;
4. Individuals who have experienced discrimination
   on the basis of disability have often had no legal recourse to
   redress such discrimination;
5. Individuals with disabilities continually
   encounter various forms of discrimination, including outright intentional
   exclusion, the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication
   barriers, overprotective rules and policies, failure to make modifications to existing facilities and
   practices, exclusionary qualification standards and criteria, segregation, and
   relegation to lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities;
6. People with disabilities, as a group, occupy an
   inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially,
   vocationally, economically, and educationally;
7. Individuals with disabilities are a discrete and
   insular minority who have been faced with restrictions and limitations,
   subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, and relegated to a
   position of political powerlessness in our society, based on characteristics that
   are beyond the control of such individuals and resulting from stereotypical assumptions
   not truly indicative of the individual ability of such individuals to
   participate in, and contribute to, society;
8. The Nation's proper goals regarding individuals
   with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation,
   independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals; and
9. The continuing existence of unfair and
   unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the
   opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities and
   costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting
   from dependency and non-productivity.

It is the purpose of this Act--

1. to provide a clear and comprehensive national
   mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with
   disabilities;
2. to provide clear, strong, consistent, enforceable
   standards addressing discrimination against individuals with disabilities;
3. to ensure that the Federal Government plays a
   central role in enforcing the standards established in this Act on behalf of
   individuals with disabilities; and
4. to invoke the sweep of congressional authority to
   address the major areas of discrimination faced day-to-day by people with disabilities.

THE ADAAA

With
passage of the ADA, Americans with disabilities had a new civil rights law and
regulations, but again the US Supreme Court, in a series of cases, began to
chip away at their protections.  And again,
disability rights activists fought back and were able to obtain passage of the
ADA Amendments Act of 2008.

The ADAAA makes four major adjustments to how the ADA
is to be applied:

• The
  term “disability” is to be construed in favor of broad coverage of
  individuals protected by the Act;


• An
  impairment that substantially limits one major life activity need not
  limit other major life activities in order to be a disability;


• An
  impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would
  substantially limit a major life activity when active; and


• The
  determination of whether an impairment substantially limits a major life
  activity is to be made without regard to the positive effects of
  mitigating measures.

OLMSTEAD

Not
to be overly negative about the US Supreme Court, it has made some positive
decisions for disability rights over the years. 
One was the case of Olmstead v.
L.C. and E.W. in 1999.  By a 6-3
vote, the Court found that the 'integration mandate' of the ADA requires public
agencies to provide services "in the most integrated setting appropriate
to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities."  In this instance, the Court told Georgia's
department of human resources that it could not segregate two women with mental
disabilities in a state psychiatric hospital long after the agency's own
treatment professionals had recommended their transfer to community care.

THE PRINCIPLES

At
the beginning of this short history, I said that a new way of thinking about
disabilities and society are imbedded in the ADA.  In short, the ADA recognizes that:

<!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]-->Disability is a
natural and normal part of the human experience that does not limit the right
to:

• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Live independently
• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Enjoy self-determination
• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Make choices
• Contribute to society
• <!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]-->Pursue meaningful careers and
• <!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]-->Enjoy full inclusion and integration in the economic,
  political, social, cultural, and educational mainstream of American society.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->Rather than
focusing on “fixing” the individual, actions must be taken to “fix” or modify
the natural, constructed, cultural, and social environment.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->Attitudinal and
institutional barriers that preclude persons with disabilities from
participating fully in society’s mainstream must be changed.

For more information about the ADA, go to: http://www.ada.gov.

When the legislative session opened, the general understanding among lobbyists was that the budget process would be a bloodbath and that very few bills would pass.  On the budget side, fiscal projections had us in a $5 billion hole.  As for bills, the House of Representatives was evenly split between Republicans and Democrats who would therefore have to agree for any bill to pass.  Given the partisan resentments of past years, few thought that cooperation would be forthcoming.  But it was.  Here are some possible reasons.

1.  Lowered expectations:  The legislature always engages in the psychological tactic of getting people ready for something awful and then delivering, to everyone's relief, something that is merely bad.  Even in the richest of years, we are always told that there is not any money.  This, of course, was not one of those years.

2.  Unsustainability:  Most policy makers realize that our aging demographics have made the structure and financing of government services unworkable for the next twenty years or so.  

3.  Willingness to innovate:  When cuts in services are inevitable, it encourages new ways to doing things.  For example, a person may insist that having a cappuccino every day is essential until the money to pay for it must come out of his beer budget.

4.  Forging new commonality:  Many have observed that all three legislative leaders come from rural Oregon and share a small town willingness to get along.  Whatever the merits of this suggestion, the urban/rural divide is as traditional in politics as the liberal/conservative one.

5.  Taxes off the table:  Ballot measures that increased tax rates for businesses and the more wealthy were behind this legislature.  This assured that tax reform would not be on the agenda, creating opportunities for discord.  With only so much money, even big campaign contributors could be told that their interests would have to wait.  Most would understand that Grandma should not be thrown under the bus to maintain the status quo.

6.  Shared reasons to gamble:  Despite all the highly charged national rhetoric on health care reform, it's well understood that the driver of reform is cost.  The balanced budget passed by the legislature is gambling that publicly-funded heath care costs can be dramatically lowered in the years ahead.  Most folks can agree to this because it delays big cuts throughout the budget and the reform strategy is to bring down high-expense care by keeping people healthier, rather than throwing them off insurance.  To go back to the beer analogy, this approach has something for both sides:  tastes great (healthy), less filling (costly).  

At the end of the session, legislators were willing to hold hands and jump off the cliff.  They began a number of reforms that will have to be implemented and tested.  Business as usual was not a winning formula.  Doing this required veteran leadership and, fortunately, it was there.  Oregon has chosen not to go down the road of Wisconsin or Minnesota which have opted for confrontation rather than innovation.  

We are nowhere near being out of the economic woods, and more needs to be done to correct some misguided policy directions, but Oregonians should be proud of what their government accomplished in this legislative session.

Things didn’t go so well for The Confederacy but
their argument for states’ rights is carried on today in politics, including
the courts.  And so the big question in a
recent Supreme Court case is whether a federal court should have the power to
change a state policy which is causing a large number of citizens to be denied
constitutional rights.  In other words,
what prevails: the rights of the individual or the power of the state? 

Last
week, the US Supreme Court decided that California is operating a prison system
that is cruel and unusual.  But it was a
close decision.  Following its well known
ideological divide, the four liberals voted yes, the four staunch conservatives
voted no and the moderate conservative (wait for it) voted…..yes! 

Why?  1.
Because the 8^th Amendment of the US Constitution outlaws cruel and
unusual punishment.  2. Because
California prisons don’t provide health and mental health care for many inmates
due to severe overcrowding.   3.  It is cruel and unusual to withhold health
and mental health care from prisoners. 

So, the five yes votes – "The Yeses” – agreed
that California should bring down the population of its prison system from 200%
of its designed capacity to 137.5% of that capacity.  The four no votes – "The Nos” – were not
happy.

Were they unhappy because California had been
taken by surprise?   No.  The California prison population has been
double the size that its buildings are designed to hold for over 11 years.  The state has been under court orders to
improve mental health services for 12 years and to improve health services for
5 years.  Instead, the Nos were fuming
because they believe the standards of a federal law were not met.  That federal law forbids local courts from
ordering states to reduce prison populations without convening a three judge
panel and meeting very high standards. 
This law, the Prison Ligation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), was not
followed, say the Nos.  The Yeses said it
was.

There was no disagreement about overcrowding or
lack of health and mental health services. 
After all, in 2006, former Governor Schwarzenegger declared a state of
emergency in the prisons, stating that “immediate action is necessary to prevent
death and harm caused by California’s severe prison overcrowding.”  The Governor was concerned about the
“increased, substantial risk for transmission of infectious illness” and a
suicide rate “approaching an average of one per week.”

The three judge panel heard evidence that,
because of a shortage of treatment beds, suicidal inmates may be held for
prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets.  Other inmates
are held for months in administrative segregation waiting for limited mental
health services.  Wait times for mental health care can be as high as 12 months. 
In 2006, the suicide rate in California’s prisons was nearly 80% higher than
the national average for prison populations, and 72.1% of suicides involved
“some measure of inadequate assessment, treatment, or intervention, and were
therefore most probably foreseeable and/or preventable.” 

Prisoners with physical illness don’t fare
better.  California’s prisons have only
half the clinical space needed to treat the current population.  A correctional
officer testified that, in one prison, up to 50 sick inmates may be held
together in a 12- by 20-foot cage for up to five hours awaiting treatment.  The
number and competence of staff is inadequate, and prisoners face significant
delays in access to care.  Adequate
housing for the disabled and aged does not exist.  The medical facilities, when
they exist at all, are in disrepair. 
Basic medical equipment is often not available or used.  Medications and
other treatment options are often not available.

Prisons have backlogs of up to 700 prisoners
waiting to see a doctor.  A review of
referrals for urgent specialty care at one prison revealed that only 105 of 316
pending referrals had a scheduled appointment, and only 2 had an appointment
scheduled to occur within 14 days. 
Urgent specialty referrals at one prison had been pending for six months
to a year.

The Nos didn’t deny these facts but choose not
to mention them.  Instead, they
challenged the idea that overcrowding results in lack of care for all
inmates.  The Yeses set out lots of
expert testimony that crowding is the primary cause of the constitutional
violations.  For example, the former warden of San Quentin and former acting
secretary of the California prisons testified that crowding “makes it virtually
impossible for the organization to develop, much less implement, a plan to
provide prisoners with adequate care.” 
The Nos were not impressed.  They
also doubted the three judge findings that many prisoners can be safely
released and that imprisonment in overcrowded conditions can increase the risk
of prison violence and re-offending upon release.  

The Yeses stressed the misery of the inmates,
the years of failed attempts to address that misery and the integrity of the
legal process that brought three judges together to consider how to responsibly
address the problem.  They supported the
judges’ decision to allow California to decide the best way to bring down the
prison population so inmates will have a chance to get at least minimally
adequate health and mental health services.

The Nos think that prison overpopulation should
not be linked to the constitutional violations. 
In their view, if a physically or mentally ill individual is subjected
to cruel and unusual punishment due to lack of proper care, that inmate can go
to federal court to request services. 
The federal courts, the Nos contend, should only order a remedy for the
harsh consequences of severe overcrowding if every inmate cannot show that the
overcrowding makes his or her punishment cruel and unusual.  

They give the example of a prison that is too
cold.  In that case, the federal court
would be justified in ordering the heat to be turned up.  In sum, they believe that running an
inherently unsafe institution is a state policy option that the courts should
not presume to overrule.  They also find
that releasing any prisoner before his or her sentence is completed will always
result in unreasonable jeopardy of public safety.  The Nos seem to not trust state officials in only this one area: deciding how to make safe release decisions. 

From my perspective, the Nos have an almost
cartoonish view of prison inmates and are either totally unconcerned with the
quality of their confinement or ignorant about the realities of administering a
state institution.  Their primary concern
seems to be the age old debate about states’ rights as it manifests itself in
constitutional jurisprudence.  In aid of
that argument, they are not afraid to throw in some fear and prejudice to spice
things up.  As the director of an agency
that promotes and defends individual rights, I find this all, shall we say, a
bit academic.

• Click here to take the survey on-line in English.

• Haga clic aquí para tomar el cuestionario en línea en español.

The survey will be open through August 15, 2011.  The more people who fill out the survey, the more valuable the overall results will be.  Therefore, we hope that in addition to participating you will also encourage others to complete the survey.

• Click here to fill out a Word version in English.

• Haga clic aquí para llenar una versión de Word en español.

Mail completed Word versions of the survey to: DRO | 620 SW 5th Ave, Suite 500 | Portland, OR 97204.  Fax completed Word versions of the survey to: 503-243-1738.  E-mail completed Word versions of the survey to: welcome@disabilityrightsoregon.org

If you have questions or need assistance in completing the survey, please contact us:

• Voice: 503-243-2081 or 1-800-452-1694

• E-mail: welcome@disabilityrightsoregon

THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING!

The legislative session is starting to lean toward the finish line.  Key legislators met in private with the Governor yesterday to hammer out a budget deal.  Rumor has it that they succeeded.  The next month will be filled with attempts to get surviving bills heard by committees and to get the big deals done.  The last two weeks of the session are when the amateurs stay home and the powerful converse and resolve.

On the state budget front, everyone knows there will be major cuts in services and benefits.  Oregon is slated to have the shortest period of public assistance in the nation, to make deep cuts in senior and disabled care, eliminate support for the families of people with intellectual disabilities, cut in-home supports for all populations, and more.  Schools are already laying off teachers and some have announced cuts to special education services.

Meanwhile, on the federal level, the Speaker of the House is demanding "trillions" of cuts to the federal budget.  This apparently includes shifting the costs of many human services programs to states.  It isn't hard to do the math on that one.  Bottom line: elimination of human services because states can't afford to provide what they are now.

Are we witnessing the break down of the social compact?  Will we go back to the 1930s when 80% of the elderly were poor and only the children of the well-to-do get a decent education?  I think very few people in this building would like to see that.  It should be interesting to see how we can avoid it.

The bill, House Bill 2296, would place the burden of proof on school
districts.  It was given a public hearing a few weeks ago but most of us
advocates thought the committee would take no further action.  Two
years ago, there was a similar bill that died in committee because of
opposition by school districts.  Although some changes were made to
address those concerns, the districts opposed the bill this time as
well, saying that if schools were required to prove that a child with
disabilities is receiving proper services, it would encourage parents to
file more complaints and ask for more hearings.

But, to our surprise, the bill was being given further consideration and
so I stopped in to see what would happen.  The hearing opened with an
explanation of what the bill does.  Rep. Sara Gelser, who sponsored the
bill, said that it would not make a big difference in terms of how the
hearings are decided but would “send a message” of support for parents
who are unhappy with the special education services being offered their
child.  Rep. Gelser has a child with disabilities and relates a few
instances in which her child did not receive proper services.

Rep. Jason Conger said that he is concerned that parents will “lawyer
up” if the burden of proof is changed.  He said that a plaintiff’s
attorney can “come in and shake down a defendant.”  He likened this to
employment cases where lawyers make frivolous demands on businesses
which settle in order to avoid the costs of litigation.  He said
opportunistic attorneys do “shakedowns,” and that this bill won’t affect
schools that are “bad actors.”  Needless to say, he is opposed.

Rep. Gelser responded, saying that there are bad actors on all sides of
education hearings.  But, she continued, money is not at stake here, it
is educational placements.  She gave examples of hearings that resulted
in no relief or minor relief and says she likes the bill but hasn’t
prioritized it.  She then talked about closure of school for the blind
and how this bill can send a message to those parents who feel the
legislature has ignored their needs.

Rep. Julie Parrish then spoke, saying that kids need better options. 
She was troubled that parents have to sue schools to have schools do the
right thing.  She thought this demonstrates the need for choice of
schools.  She said that a parent has to sue because the local school is
the only option.  The parent should be able to shop for someplace
better.  She thought this bill will cost schools more and she does not
want to put a burden schools to spend more and thereby take away
services from others.  But, she said, this bill is not really about
disabled children. It’s about school districts having too much power
because they have a monopoly.  She concluded, saying that this is why
she “may be a yes vote.  Something’s got to change!”

The next speaker was Rep. John Huffman who said he wants to send a
message of affirmation to parents but wants to do it like they did it
for the School for the Blind.  He said the legislature expects districts
to listen to parents and do the best they can.  “Every child is a TAG
child.  We pay teachers good money to find how to stimulate children. 
Parents shouldn’t be forced into the situation of filing a lawsuit.”

Rep. Betty Komp then spoke, saying that this is a highly charged topic
on which she “goes back and forth.”  She said that she believes in
public school education and that the best way to support it is to pass a
decent budget.   This bill, she said, is contradictory to this
message.  She will be a no vote.

Rep. Michael Dembrow was then recognized to speak.  He thought that most
districts are trying to do the right thing but problems do arise.  He
wished there could be a neutral 3rd party or ombudsman that parents
could go to and hoped this is something that will be pursued.  He will
support bill because he respects Gelser and his belief that a strong
message needs to be sent.  The legislature, he said, wants school boards
to protect all children.  Rep. Lew Frederick appeared to agree with
Rep. Dembrow, but chose not to speak.

Committee co-chair Matt Wingard had the last word.  He said that the
kind of frustration that parents experience drive this type of bill.  He
had heard many stories from parents of special needs children.  It
“breaks my heart,” he says, “that parents can’t get the sense they are
being listened to.”  He is proud to support bill.

Then came the very interesting vote.  Republicans Huffman and Conger
vote no.  Democrat Komp voted no.  Republicans Wingard and Parrish voted
aye.  Democrats Gelser, Dembrow and Frederick voted aye.  HB 2296 is
moved out of the committee with a “do pass” recommendation by a 5-3
vote.

My analysis, for what it’s worth, is that since the bill was viewed as
being largely symbolic, many legislators looked at it exactly that way
and chose to make their own symbolic points.  Wingard and Parrish
promoted their view that parents should have more choice in schools. 
Conger used the opportunity to slap trial lawyers.  Komp spoke to the
issue of adequate funding for public schools, thereby countering the
Wingard and Parrish position that the problem is not lack of funding but
lack of choice.  The remaining committee members pretty much addressed
the merits of the bill itself.  If only they had counted, HB 2296 would
still have passed, but by a 3-1 vote.

I’m on a flight from Portland
to DC to meet with other P&A directors from around the country to discuss
issues of mutual concern.

Oddly enough, while I’m doing this, Congress is trying to
decide if and how our funding will continue for the next six months.  P&As are not slated for elimination in
any of the proposed budgets, but if a budget is not agreed upon soon, DRO may
run out of reserves and be forced to temporarily close our doors.  I don’t expect that to happen, but it does
get one’s attention.

Imagine that.  Even
though all legislators agree that we should continue to receive federal
funding, the overall budget battles may mean that we are unable to pay our
staff and provide some services to our clients and potential clients.  I say “some” because, as a law office, we
have an ethical obligation to continue to serve our existing clients whether we
are paid or not. 

Perhaps this trip is a costly excess right now.  I know that if I didn’t take the trip, it
would solve less than 1% of next month’s payroll cost and I really do need to
know what’s happening in Washington.  So here I am in my cramped seat thinking back
to yesterday at the state capitol where I had yet another discussion about the
budget and service cuts that are looming. 
Which programs will be eliminated? 
Which services will be scaled back? 
Whose salaries and provider rates will take a hit?  Is this trip taking me from the frying pan to
the fire, or the reverse?

Troubling questions, indeed.  But I remind myself that we in the disability rights movement
are warriors.  We have seen tough times before
and have learned that though we may face hardships, we can never give ground on
our values.  More than ever, this is a
time emphasize support of integrated, community-based services that promote
choice, independence and self-direction. 
It is clearly a time to put aside old institutional models because they
are expensive, ineffective and repressive.  

In DC, I will be hearing about the many exciting initiatives
happening around the country to further our values.  From this comes energy and inspiration,
things that some would discourage us from expecting in our capitols.