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Editorial: Addiction – bureaucracy should seek more budget cuts

From The Parkersburg News and Sentinel:

With its budget zeroed out for 2017-18, and the West Virginia Division of Tobacco Prevention likely to be reduced from an 8-person staff to one, there are folks — particularly in Charleston — pointing to the office as a prime example of the evils of budget cuts. People will lose their jobs and valuable government programs will go down the tubes, they say.

Not exactly. Loss of the division’s annual appropriation of $3.03 million will leave it depending on carried-over state funds and federal grants. That means one person, Director Jim Kerrigan, gets to stay. He told another newspaper he hopes to be able to carry on the Quitline and RAZE programs without the Cessation Program manager and coordinator, Clean Indoor Air Program manager and coordinator, Youth Program manager and coordinator, and division secretary. In fact he did not sound pessimistic about being able to do so.

Meanwhile, Juliana Frederick Curry, of the state chapter of the American Cancer Society, unintentionally explained why these are not sky-is-falling cuts, though she was attempting to show support for the division.

“It’s not a good thing, because we continue to have the highest youth smoking rate and the second-highest adult smoking rate in the nation,” she told the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Precisely. The Division of Tobacco Prevention and its previous iterations have been part of the bureaucracy in Charleston for nearly 30 years. Other than the changes one might expect to see as cultural pressure across the nation makes tobacco use less socially acceptable, the Mountain State is in no better shape than it was then. In fact, some parts of the state are worse.

And Kerrigan does not seem particularly worried about the seven people whose positions should shortly be terminated. He is “hopeful” they will be able to simply transfer into other positions within the enormous Department of Health and Human Resources.

Even Gov. Jim Justice, who never misses an opportunity to jump on a situation he can exaggerate, has been mum on this one. It is only $3 million, but imagine if someone took the time to look for similar situations across state government. Too bad our bloated bureaucracy has been such a hard habit to break.

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