Senate Majority Leader Frederick E. Berry says the magnitude of Gov. Mitt Romney's threat to cut vital health and human services from the state budget forced him to take action against it.
The senator's efforts apparently met with success.

Berry said Wednesday he was heartened that the governor's office responded affirmatively, albeit belatedly, to his Sept. 12 letter, requesting that the cuts be curtailed.

Romney announced this week that the Legislature would be given the opportunity to appropriate enough funds so that ranks of social workers, lawyers and other staffers at the state Department of Mental Health (DMH), state Department of Social Services (DSS) and the Division of Youth (DYS) Services would not lose their jobs.

The governor also notified Berry in a Sept. 23 letter that he agrees the vital programs outlined by the senator need to be preserved.

"Because the Legislature cut these programs at DSS, DYS and DMH, and because the Legislature did not act upon our repeated requests to restore funding for them, we had no choice other than to implement the cuts you enacted," Romney wrote.

Berry, however, viewed the situation differently.

"The governor imposed an artificial deadline of Sept. 15. As I have said all along, there was no need for an artificial date, but the governor wanted to put us in a political box.

"I don't think the governor was looking at the problems that these decisions were causing. By calling attention to who would be hurt by these cuts, I was just trying to put a face on it."

Romney, in his letter, also stated that a supplemental budget will be on his desk within the next 10 days that will restore funding to the programs. According to Romney, he has received assurances from Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Therese Murray that the funding will be put in place.

"I will operate these programs under the assumption that they will be fully funded, recognizing that we are spending above your appropriation," Romney told Berry. "As you point out in your letter, the programs will run out of money entirely in March if funding is not restored by the Legislature before that time. We need to make sure this does not happen."

Berry said the governor and his Legislative colleagues apparently listened to his opinion on this matter because of his experience and track record. "I'm not a bomb tosser. I've been in the building long enough to know that you can't react to everything, so I pick my spots. If I find something that is doing harm to people, I react. That's what happened here," he said. "There was a lack of communication between the governor and the Legislature. As the governor says in his letter, if we, the Legislature, fund the problem, it will go away."

The Senate has been supportive of the needed funding.

"But we live in a bi-cameral world," said Berry. "Nobody in the House is holding it up. It's just a matter of negotiation. Everybody has different priorities."

Berry had accused the governor of gambling with the lives of the mentally ill, at-risk children and the well-being of dedicated, underpaid social workers, for political gain. The senator also dismissed as balderdash the governor's suggestion that these budget cuts were a difficult choice in tough times.