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The long-awaited announcement that Riverfront Prison will close has
finally been made. What, if anything, the Local plans to do is unknown; however, they were appraised of the probability
YEARS ago when members reported suspicious activity at the site when the property was being surveyed. Instead of beginning
THEN with a strategy to sway public opinion in favor of keeping it open and applying political pressure early, we will now
be forced to go into crisis mode and running to catch up to where the state is already at in the process.
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Chairman of the powerful Assembly Budget Committee submitted a bill
(A-3625) in January 2009 which calls for the closure of 5 developmental centers over the next 5 years. The announcement
by Assemblyman Lou Greenwald, a staunch supporter of PRIVATIZATION and opponent of any attempt to require a cost analysis
of privatization efforts to ensure true savings for taxpayers, relied on false and distorted information about the true costs
of institutional care versus the same care in the community.
His proposal to close would dump 2,400 mentally retarded
individuals into community provider beds that are already non-existent, as evidenced by the waiting list of 8,000 individuals
waiting for community OR institutional beds. Apparently, Greenwald thinks that subtracting 2,400 beds from a deficit
of 8,000 beds, and adding 2,400 more people to the waiting list somehow equals a perfect balance of services for these vulnerable
individuals.
Remember when Democrats would never hurt the working class??? This is just another example of
how much political power the Local has lost in NJ politicks!
Again, we are forced to work against a tide that has
been allowed to rise for years instead of a media campaign that should have been used years ago in order to educate a public
that knows little of the real facts! We already have evidence that the cost of caring for these folks in community settings
is MORE than in the developmental centers in a peer-reviewed, publishd study. We have the evidence of a 92% increase
in the death rate of people sent out of developmental centers into the community. We have the NJ budget figures that
Greenwald reviewed in his own legislative committee that proves he is using distroted and false figures to describe the institutional
costs. Now all we need is direction from a real leader, and alot of political capital, which was wasted since the departure
of Tom and Fran Fiore.
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