Urban Exile: Prepared to Slash Human Services Funding, County Commish Writes That Board “Needs Understanding”

by P.D. Lesko

Barbara Levin Bergman (left) is retiring from the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners at the end of her present term. As is the case in Washtenaw County politics,  Andy LaBarre has been identified as the next District 8 lama by a group of local Tibetan monks. LaBarre is a perfectly genial young man who carried Representative John Dingell around on a velvet pillow for several years as a staffer. At the same time, LaBarre juggled a Blackberry and six cell phones. Andy LaBarre was known for replying to emails sent to him regarding Dingell business even before the sender had finished typing.

In short, Andy LaBarre is nothing like Barbara Levin Bergman. Thank the Tibetan Mountain Gods.

Over the past two years, Levin Bergman has become a parody of even herself. A look at this video of an August 4, 2010 meeting of the Washtenaw County Commissioners, and we see Barbara Levin Bergman arguing for hiring sexual predators into county jobs simply because County Commissioner Kristin Judge had suggested that the county shouldn’t forego background checks of job applicants.

The travesty that County Commissioners Leah Gunn and Barbara Bergman voted to defund the county’s health insurance program and close enrollment to the county’s uninsured low income adults and children shouldn’t be lost on anyone. Unlike Medicare-eligible Barbara Levin Bergman, of whom buddy Gunn tartly told the press “needs her health insurance from the county,” evidently all those children didn’t need health insurance. Levin Bergman recently voted against ending taxpayer-funded health insurance for county commissioners.

Now, the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners is weighing a proposal to slash money for human services. At the same meeting, the lot of them (minus Kristin Judge, who was absent) voted unanimously to re-up a tax the Board voted to impose in 2009—the bulk of which goes to fund Ann Arbor SPARK. In case you’ve never heard of Ann Arbor SPARK, it’s a “job creation” boondoggle that has never formally tracked its “job creation” numbers, or had them verified. In fact, unlike human services agencies that will provide, upon request, reams of data that show exactly how many actual clients have been served in any given time period down to the nano-second, Ann Arbor SPARK, which receives millions in public money, including millions skimmed from the Ann Arbor Public Schools, recently refused to release its audited financial statements to A2Politico, claiming to be a “semi-private” non-profit.

Julie Steiner is the Head of the Washtenaw Housing Alliance. The goal of the organization is simple: WHA wants to end homelessness. After Washtenaw County Administrator, Verna McDaniel, proposed a budget which would cut $455,538 dollars in human services funding, Julie Steiner sent out an emotional call for continued support of social service funding. Barbara Levin Bergman shot off this reply to Steiner’s letter to a man who had contacted Bergman after receiving Steiner’s letter. Bergman’s response was forwarded to A2Politico:

Bob,

I would like to ask you to consider that the Board of Commissioners is acting in good will.

Ms Steiner is aware of this situation.  What we  need now is some community understanding of our budget constraints.

All of us are concerned and are doing our best.  Refer to the gaff we are getting from the Humane Society.  Their needs must be seen within the entire human services universe.

No one likes to be cut.  Most human services providers are aware of this necessity and are aware that we are doing our best.

I would like you to consider our situation before you forward communications such as you did.

Thank you,

Barbara Levin Bergman

What elected County Commissioners need is “understanding?” Well, no. They get paid $15,500 per year for 8 hours of work per month, plus per diems, travel expenses, meals, health insurance and retirement benefits. Barbara Levin Bergman demonstrates, once again, that she is not only arrogant, but confused about the meaning of the term “public service.” In 2010, Levin Bergman was found to have inappropriately charged the County and its taxpayers for $1,875 of per diem expenses (is it any wonder she voted against ending the per diems). She has, inexplicably, repeatedly refused to refund the money.

This latest incident in which she whines that the “community” of human service providers, and the thousands of people these providers want to help, “need to understand budget constraints,” is yet another frame in the feature-length reel of Levin Bergman bloopers. If she were a fictional character, some of this would be hysterically funny (“Yes! The County should hire sexual predators. Some of my best friends are sexual predators. Wait. That came out wrong.”) However, Barbara Levin Bergman isn’t a Looney Toons character with a voice provided by Mel Blanc. She’s a public official with her hand in the public till who refuses to pay back money she took for per diems—money an outside agency concluded was given to her in error—and continues to make spectacularly callous political decisions, such as voting to impose a property tax to fund Ann Arbor SPARK, while the number of hungry, homeless and indigent individuals in the County continue to rise.

Yes, the Washtenaw County Commissioners need to make tough budget decisions. A look at the county budget makes the Board’s priorities crystal clear. In the county’s 2009-2011 budgets, social services took a 67 percent cut, while the judicial (circuit and district courts) took the smallest hit of all, a 7.5 percent reduction. Departments such as IT, and the County Clerk’s office were subjected to similarly small budget reductions.

Where might the $455,538 McDaniel proposes to cut from Human Services come from? For starters, the Board could get rid of its department of redundancy department Economic Development Department, as opposed to consolidating it with two other departments, and redirect hundreds of thousands of dollars to human services. In 2009, Kristin Judge proposed that the county could save almost $400,000 by cutting cell phone perks for county employees. That money-saving idea was never adopted, and $400,000 in cell phones for people with county jobs, generous benefits and salaries, is close to the amount McDaniel proposes to cut from human services funding.

Levin Bergman’s email response, above, demonstrates clearly that while she is willing to mewl and puke about how difficult her job is, and how much “gaff” she gets from that uppity white woman who oversees the county’s animal shelter, she supports feeding the bureaucracy first and providing services with whatever happens to be left over, or with whatever can be squeezed out of taxpayers by imposing additional taxes and fees.

If the Dalai Lama is right, and there is reincarnation, maybe next time around Barbara Levin Bergman can come back as a homeless lhasa apso.