When Whining Makes Us Look Uncharitable

   

We expose ourselves when times are lean and sacrifice is a requirement to society’s overall well being. Are we charitable when asked? Do we put our needs ahead of the needs of others? Do we whine and insist that the burden be borne elsewhere? Do we pretend poverty tossing forward waves of rhetoric that camouflage our own security?
    How we respond defines us. That said, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board has not acquitted itself well. The group’s budget was cut by $4.6 million for FY 2008, and the board has responded as if its mission going forward has been irretrievably damaged. Affordable housing projects will be lost and conservation of farmland will dwindle, some opportunities will disappear. Forever. 

Perhaps the overreaction should be expected. Advocates are advocates. If the affordable housing and conservation efforts are how you make your living, then, obviously, you complain, and apparently the most effective way to campaign is to insist that all the good the organization has done will now be put at risk.
    But advocates should also be cautious of the boomerang effect that comes through overstatement. If the governor’s proposed cut is seconded by the Legislature, and if the program does not immediately collapse, then what? Doesn’t that strengthen the skeptic’s voice?
    Or is that the point? The chance that the program will not wither and die – or suffer much at all – is something the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board cannot afford to take.
    The group is trying to capitalize on fear of the unknown.
    The group’s logic is also wildly off mark. The group suggests, for example, that when farmers want to sell their development rights that they want to do so then. That window of opportunity is perilously small. If the money isn’t there, the opportunity is gone. The land isn’t conserved and the state’s heritage is threatened. It’s even argued that the failure to capitalize on this opportunity slows progress on global warming.
    That’s a yoga stretch the likes of which we haven’t seen. Assuming their logic is correct, then even fully funded their budget not enough. If life is about contingency funds, then how does one budget adequately? Is that our government’s role, to set aside millions upon millions of dollars just in case the “opportunity” arises? If so, why isn’t the same approach used in seizing one-time marketing opportunities? Why aren’t we setting aside millions upon millions of dollars just in case Medicaid’s needs surge?
    Oh, wait a minute. Medicaid’s needs have surged. That’s where the $4.6 million from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board went.
    Hmm. Health care for Vermont’s needy, or keeping the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board’s reserve flush – just in case an opportunity to buy some land materializes.
    Does the board understand how uncharitable it appears in this debate?
    This is a group that has a $10 million cash reserve, a reserve that has averaged this same $10 million reserve for roughly seven years. The group has already been told that the cut is a one-time, one-year event, that the funding would resume to normal levels in FY 2009. It has also been noted that it’s highly unlikely any project’s completion would be threatened by this one-time cut.
    Ah, the whine goes, but this one-year cut makes funding unpredictable, and they can’t operate in an atmosphere of unpredictability.
    Welcome to the real world. Name a business that wears predictability as a given. Pick a family whose financial life is always predictable. As a state, we can’t even repair our roads and bridges with budgets that are predictable. Yet, if the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board does not have predictability, it falls apart, with the state itself collapsing shortly afterwards?
    Please.
    The group even argues that the state’s quality of life is at stake should the group be forced to swallow this $4.6 million cut.
    Hardly.
    But Vermont’s ability to afford what it has IS threatened if all such groups respond to the call for sacrifice as the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board has, which is to say the burden should fall to others.
    That’s public exposure of the most unflattering sort.
                        
                by Emerson Lynn  (Mr. Lynn is editor and publisher of the St. Albans Messenger where this article                          first appeared.)

Comments

[Jon Harrison]

Huzzahs for Mr. Lynn. He puts the case eloquently. The Board, I think, is more worried about job security than anything else.

[Gordon Smith]

The conundrum for them is - do we continue on, and show that maybe we can function with less money (yikes), or do we go in the tank, taking the chance that Vermont will survive without us, and we will get cut entirely (however unlikely)?