Playing Defense
Matt Bartle was such a good soccer dad, some parents had no idea he’d betray them so callously.
But this past March, Bartle co-sponsored Missouri Governor Matt Blunt's Medicaid bill, which makes significant cuts to the state budget's largest single line item, tightening eligibility requirements and eliminating 89,000 Missourians from the state's welfare roles. (It jettisons reimbursements for podiatry, dental work and some home care for the disabled and installs a premium for children receiving discounted health care through another state program, pricing out an estimated 23,000 kids.) The bill also contains an adoption-subsidies clause stipulating that families must earn less than 200 percent of the poverty level to continue receiving state aid for their "special needs" children. Some special-needs kids are victims of sexual or physical abuse; others are deemed hard to place because of their race or ethnic heritage. Most such children come with extra costs associated with special education, care for chronic medical conditions or long-term counseling. In May 2003, the North American Council on Adoptable Children ranked Missouri as the second-lowest adoption-subsidy provider in the nation. (State subsidies in 2003 generally ranged from $200 to $300 per child per month. )
An estimated 4,621 families were in a similar situation, according to the child-welfare watchdog group Citizens for Missouri's Children.
The cuts threatened to cripple child-placement efforts within the Missouri Department of Social Services, which has been struggling for years to find homes for its charges. In February, 1,925 children were awaiting adoption. Though a few hundred children find new homes each year, a few hundred more enter the system. In Jackson County in February, 24 kids in foster care found permanent homes; 22 more entered or were returned to state custody.
Another Blue Springs couple, Michelle and Stephen Ehrnman, have adopted six foster children since 1997. (They also have two biological children.) She works part time in a school cafeteria in Blue Springs, and he works as a technical analyst for Sprint. In the past, Michelle Ehrnman says, the family used the MFCAA food pantry and accepted donated clothing to stay solvent.
"We're a Christian family, and at this point right now ... I feel kind of betrayed," she says. "I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I voted for them
now, which is sad. There's a definite chance that, at least in those two slots, we would go Democrat if it meant getting them out of office."
http://www.pitch.com/issues/2005-04-14/news/stline.html