Advocates for the mentally and otherwise disabled are encouraged by Governor Malloy’s appointment of Morna Murray of Glastonbury as Connecticut’s next commissioner of the Department of Developmental Services.
That’s because Murray has been president and chief executive of the Connecticut Community Providers Association, the group representing the nonprofit agencies that, largely financed by government, assist the disabled far less expensively than government does directly, unions having taken control of government’s operations so much that service to the public has become largely incidental. In general the employees of the nonprofits are as underpaid as state government’s employees are overpaid.
While the annual budget of the Department of Developmental Services is huge, more than $1 billion, about 5 percent of state government’s budget, and the department serves about 19,000 disabled adults and children, it long has neglected as many as 3,000 disabled adults who should be placed in group homes but instead remain the burden of their aging and even elderly parents.
This has been entirely a matter of state government’s failure to appropriate the estimated $100 million more per year that would be needed to eliminate the waiting list for housing, even as state government usually manages to find more than that every year in increased appropriations for politically influential special interests, raises for state and municipal government employees, and other undertakings that are trivial compared with society’s obligation to care for the disabled, whose families are starting to complain loudly about their neglect.
With the appointment of someone so connected with the nonprofit service groups the governor may be implicitly recognizing that neglect. But can Murray redirect enough money from within the Department of Developmental Services to eliminate the waiting list for housing, or persuade the governor to find the money elsewhere?
If not, her appointment won’t mean much more than her chance to qualify for an extravagant state government pension.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
