Solid Promises Broken by Texas Officials
- From: "BlindNews Mailing List" <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:55:28 -0400
Chairman Mal's Little Red Book (Blog)
Monday, September 10, 2007
Solid Promises Broken by Texas Officials
By Chairman Mal
Howdy comrades! When the Texas legislature voted to consolidate Vocational
Rehabilitation Services once provided by the Texas Commission for the Blind
with a wide range of services under a huge umbrella agency, blind Texans were
promised that certain services for blind Texans would continue to be provided
by a Division for Blind Services. NFB and ACB testified that consolidating
services for blind people could be disastrous, but State officials promised
that services would actually improve as a result of streamlining all these
programs by eliminating duplication of efforts throughout a myriad of agencies
which provide similar programs. That's how Texas ended up with DARS, Department
of Assistive and Rehabilitaive Services, a massive bureaucracy comprising about
two dozen different agencies or programs.We were given solemn promises that
certain activities such as provision of adaptive technology, human resources
for professionals specializing in provision of blindness skils wo
uld always be kept within the Division of Blind Services. Comrades, those
officials lied to us because both Adaptive Technology and Human Resources are
being subsumed into the vast bureaucratic structure of DARS.
Just as both NFB and ACB feared, these highly specialized services absolutely
crucial for the successful rehabilitation of blind Texans are now endangered.
We are fighting for our common needs, presenting a rare united front in
opposition to further consolidation. Can we trust a general agency to
understand what kinds of adaptive technology we need for a given job? Will a
bureaucrat eventually decide that having talking computers should be adequate
and eliminate the teaching of Braille? What's to prevent some future bean
counter from deciding that blind people have those nifty albeit costly talking
computers allowing them to telecommute to work? The State could save big bucks
on teaching travel skills, after all. This may sound preposterous, but similar
notions have been proposed by uninformed agency or university types in other
states. In other words, the promises that blind people had nothing to fear from
streamlining have turned out to be a solid con.Regards,Chairman MalPo
wer to the Peeps!
posted by Chairman Mal at 11:29 AM
http://chairmanmal.blogspot.com/2007/09/solid-promises-broken-by-texas.html
BlindNews Mailing List
Subscribe: BlindNews-Request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" as subject
Unsubscribe: BlindNews-Request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" as subject
Moderator: BlindNews-Moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Archive: http://GeoffAndWen.com/blind
RSS: http://GeoffAndWen.com/BlindNewsRSS.asp
More information about RSS feeds will be published shortly.
Other related posts:
- » Solid Promises Broken by Texas Officials
