November 21, 2008 06:15 PM UTC

El Paso County: Still "Drowning In Bathtub"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Checking in with our fellow citizens along the Ronald Reagan Highway, an update on how that whole Grover Norquist-inspired “small government” ideological fixation thing is working out.

Not real well, as the Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

El Paso County will no longer inspect daycare centers or test for diseases such as West Nile Virus because of a sweeping round of layoffs announced Thursday.

The El Paso County Department of Health and Environment is laying off 23 people, going to a four-day workweek and cutting five vacant positions effective Jan. 1 to help cut $1.68 million from its budget. The cuts mean an end to several inspection and monitoring programs, and a blind eye will be turned to many common public complaints. The layoffs come on top of about 10 positions that were eliminated earlier this year.

Since January, the department has lost 18 percent of its staff and nearly15 percent of its budget. The health department is mostly funded by state and federal money, but its core services rely on county dollars, which will be $2.8 million in 2009. The health department cut $500,000 earlier this year, but the additional reductions are needed because it’s drawn down its emergency savings too far.

“I think it’s a dangerous situation,” said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark…

Some of the cuts may violate state law. But the law is vague when it comes to public health, said Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Air-quality monitoring, for example, is used to determine whether Colorado Springs is in compliance with the federal clean air laws. If the county doesn’t do it, will the state be forced to step in? He said the news was still fresh, and there were many questions for the two agencies to sort through.

Before the latest round of cuts, the health department had eliminated meth lab inspections and a school safety program, and it scaled back disease investigations. It is also performing fewer than half its state-required food-service inspections…

In June, El Paso County cut its suicide prevention program–even though Colorado Springs has the second highest suicide rate in the nation. There aren’t enough deputies to patrol the county or staff the jail. Child protection services cut. Selling off the parks.

Doug Bruce’s dream is El Paso County’s nightmare–but rather than question the busted ideological underpinnings of this failure to govern responsibly, too many will just turn up the volume on their talk radios and continue to vote against their best interests.

What’s the matter with El Paso County? The same problem as Kansas.